Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight

Synopsis

The song appears in many variants but the main theme is that the knight of the title woos the lady with music (i.e. blows a magic horn, or in some variations sings a magic song), or abducts her, or persuades her to take money and horses from her parents, and carries her off to a deep wood or seaside, where he tells her that he has killed seven (or more) other women and plans to do the same to her. In many European versions it is made explicit that he proposes to "dishonour" her as well. She, however, distracts him by one of a number of means and then contrives to kill him in her stead.

The lady of the title is named variously as "Lady Isabel", "the King's daughter" "May Collin", "May Colven", "pretty Polly", or not named at all. Variants of the song usually imply that she is rich and beautiful. The knight is, in some versions, a normal, but villainous, mortal man, but in others he is an "elf knight". The term "outlandish knight", which appears in several variants might imply something supernatural about the character, or may be a reference to the border regions between England and Scotland. The word "outlandish" at one time meant "foreign" and has come to mean "bizarre".

Depending on the characteristics of the knight, he may woo the lady by the usual human practices or by supernatural powers. For instance, in some variations he blows a magic horn or sings a magic song, causing the lady to profess love to him:

She is made to leave her parents' house and go with the knight, either by persuasion, coercion, or magical enchantment. In some versions the knight persuades her to steal money from her parents before she leaves.

They arrive at their destination, which in some versions is explicitly named (e.g. "Bunion Bay" or "Wearie's Well") and may be beside the sea or a river, or in a deep wood. He tells her about his previous victims and that she will be the next.

In most versions, he then orders the lady to undress and remove her jewels. In some variants, she then asks him to turn away while she undresses, giving her the opportunity to surprise him and, for example, push him in the sea or "tumble him into the stream". In other variants, she tells him to "lay your head upon my knee", in some cases offering to de-louse the knight. He agrees, on the condition that should he fall asleep, she shall not harm him while he sleeps. However, she sings a magic song: "Wi a sma charm she lulld him fast asleep". While he sleeps, she ties him up, sometimes with his own belt, then wakes the knight and either stabs him with a dagger or beheads him:

Some variants end at this point, but several include a curious final section in which the lady returns home and engages in conversation with a parrot in a cage. She usually makes a bargain with the bird that she will give it a golden cage if it refrains from telling her father of the escapade with the knight.

Historical background

The balance of opinion amongst scholars is that the ballad variants all stem from Germanic songs and folklore of the Nix, shapeshifting water spirits who usually appear in human form and lure women to their doom with music. Common features between the ballad and these legends include the lord or elf who appears in human form but is actually "otherworldly"; the enchanting of women with music (the horn blowing or fiddle playing of many ballad variants); and the drowning of victims in water.

The ballad also pulled in many elements from the "Heer Halewijn" song and the Bluebeard legends of the 13th century, and the stories of a beheading may have also roots in the apocryphal story of Judith and Holofernes (see Book of Judith).

There have been various other rationalisations, attaching the story to specific locations and historical events: for example to Gilles de Laval in the early fifteenth century. The variant May Collean has been attached, as a legend, to the coast of Ayrshire, where the heroine was said to come from the family Kennedy of Colzean. A rocky promontory called Gamesloup, on the Ayrshire coast, is pointed to by local people as the spot where the knight drowned his victims. This local association is noted by A. L. Lloyd who quotes it as an example of a ballad which "so strikes the common imagination that people want to make the piece their own by giving it a local setting".

Lloyd also refers to a suggestion, by Leon Pineau, that the ballad is an ancient solar myth, relating to the sun and the seasons of the year. In this interpretation, the villain represents the spirit of night and winter, and the murdered victims are the months of the year: the heroine of the song represents the sun who brings winter to an end.

There has also been an attempt at a psychoanalytical interpretation, by Paul de Keyser. He suggests that, in the singer's subconscious, the villain is the sister of the heroine. His beheading (in some versions) symbolises castration—the punishment for the singer's own incestuous desires.

Lloyd gives much more credence to the Hungarian scholar, Lajos Vargyas, who has suggested that the origins of the song are much earlier and are based in Asia, having then been taken into Europe by the Magyars. One scene which appears in some variants of the ballad is that in which the lady sits beneath a tree whilst the villain places his head in her lap, to be de-loused. She looks up and sees his bloody weapons hanging from the branches of the tree. This image is very close to that depicted in medieval church paintings in Hungary and Slovakia, of St. Ladislaus being de-loused by a woman, beneath a tree from which his weapons and helmet hang. An almost identical image has been found on a sword scabbard, originating from Siberia, dating from 300BC, and now in the Hermitage collection in Leningrad. It is claimed that the scene crops up in epic ballads of the Mongols, relating to the abduction of a woman by another tribe. If correct, the basis of the ballad may have survived over 2000 years of oral tradition, and a journey from the mountains of Western Mongolia, to the villages of England.

Steve Roud and Julia Bishop point out that there is no evidence that the English version of the ballad is very old. There are two versions from the second half of the eighteenth century, and "no earlier versions have so far been located".

They also stress the absence of magical elements in British texts:

"It is a great disappointment to many that the song as found in Britain, in contrast to many of its continental cousins, has no obvious supernatural element (apart from the talking parrot, of course) and it is usually assumed that those elements have been lost, rather than that they were never there. It has been suggested, for example, that because the False Knight drowns his victims he must originally have been some kind of water-monster, but why such a being can be killed by throwing him into the water is never explained."

Standard references

The song has also appeared in several published collections of folk songs and ballads, for example:

Textual variants

Several variations of the ballad were classified by Francis James Child that feature a "Lord" instead of an elf knight.

Some variations have a parrot at the end, who promises not to tell what happened. In some of these, the parrot is eaten by the cat.

The variations of the ballad vary on some of the key characters and details:

Other titles:

The Roud Folk Song Index lists 68 different titles. "The Outlandish Knight is the most frequent.

Non-English variants

The ballad is known throughout Europe and is described by Child as the ballad which "has perhaps obtained the widest circulation". He notes that the Scandavian and German versions (both Low and High German) are the fullest versions, while the southern European ones are rather shorter, and the English versions somewhat brief.

The Dutch song "Heer Halewijn" is one of the earlier (13th century) versions of this tale, fuller and preserving older elements, including such things as the murderer's head speaking after the heroine has beheaded him, attempting to get her to do tasks for him.

At least 60 French, or French-Canadian versions have been collected and these almost all end in the same location as the English version, on a riverbank or by the sea, a motif only found elsewhere in the extensive and widespread Polish variants.

Numerous German variants are known. Child says 26 German variants but Lloyd, writing more than a century later, claims over 250. In some, the heroine rescues herself; in others her brother rescues her; and in still others, the murderer succeeds but her brother kills him after the fact. In some of them, the dead women reappear as doves and attempt to warn the latest victim.

Eleven Danish variants are known, often including the heroine's meeting with the sister or the men of the murderer and dealing with them as well. An Icelandic version has a very short account of the tale. Other variants are northern Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Magyar.

Songs that refer to Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight

The dialogue between the Lady and the parrot, which appears in some versions, was made into a comic song: "Tell Tale Polly", published in Charley Fox's Minstrel Companion (ca. 1860).

Motifs

Another related ballad, "Hind Etin" (Child Ballad #41), also begins with abduction and rape by an elf, but ends with the pair falling in love and living happily together.

Many of the same motifs are found in Child Ballad 48, "Young Andrew".

Literature

Various forms of these ballads show great similarity to the fairy tales Fitcher's Bird and Bluebeard.

Art

Arthur Rackham's "May Colvin and the Parrot" illustrates this ballad.

Kentucky artist and ballad singer Daniel Dutton has a painting of this ballad, titled "False Sir John", on his Ballads of the Barefoot Mind website.

Music

Variants of the song are commonly sung to several different tunes. The following tune was collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1908 from Mr Hilton in South Walsham, Norfolk. It was published in the Folk Song Journal of English Folk Dance and Song Society (IV 123), and included in The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.