Reviews. 129
Rhine, who goes to her married elder sister as a servant, lives unrecognised and neglected in her house for half a year, and when dying reveals who she is, to the great remorse of the elder woman, who offers milk and wine, — but too late to save her. In another we recognise a Danish and German ballad-subject, — the drowning of two kings' children. Yet another relates the fate of a false sweet- heart, who, having sworn to one lover that the devil may take her if she has deceived him, is danced with by the devil at her wedding, the evil one whirling her away over stock and stone until he finally breaks her neck and legs.
Amongst the subjects of the songs we find a good many similar to those common in British folk-song. A naive carol on the death of Jesus, three moralising songs on Death and Judgment, and four on the Ages of Man might well pass as old English if translated. Accumulative and counting-songs are represented, and several of the narrative texts recall familiar ballads of our country. Thus we find Swiss versions of the crafty beggar-man and the noble lady ; of the " Lord Lovel " type of ballad, in which the absent lover is hastily summoned but returns only to kiss the clay-cold lips of his dead love ; of the girl who springs upon the horse of an insolent suitor when he is not looking, and so escapes ; of the cruel child- murderess ; and of the huntsman who shoots his love instead of a young deer, is put into a cell, and is condemned to die. The latter recalls a Somerset song and a Gaelic ballad, in both of which the animal is, however, not a deer but a swan or duck.
Some songs, — amongst them several about murders and other crimes, — combine old ballad-commonplaces of phraseology with modern events, and resemble our later broadsides in structure. Concerning the ballad-sheet literature, old or new, of his own country Herr Grolimund is unfortunately silent. Our British ballad-commonplace of instructions given by a dying person about a " marble-stone " and the inscription thereon, etc., is found often in these Swiss songs, the phraseology being in some cases strikingly similar to ours. We find also a Swiss version of the " Enoch Arden " type of ballad, — a favourite one in French folk- song, — in which the husband after long absence returns to find his wife established with another. Satirical songs are plentiful; some
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