Also, maiden, what is thicker than the forest?
Also, maiden, what is there that's rootless?
Also, maiden, what is never silent?
Also, what is there past finding out?'
'I will answer, merchant's son, will answer,
All the six wise riddles will I answer.
Higher than the forest is the moon;
Brighter than the light the ruddy sun;
Thicker than the forest are the stars;
Rootless is, O merchant's son, a stone;
Never silent, merchant's son, the sea;
And God's will is past all finding out.'
'Thou hast guessed, O maiden fair, guessed rightly,
All the six wise riddles hast thou answered;
Therefore now to me shalt thou be wedded,
Therefore, maiden, shalt thou be the merchant's wife.'[1]
Among the Gaels, both Scotch and Irish, a ballad of the same description is extremely well known. Apparently only the questions are preserved in verse, and the connection with the story made by a prose comment. Of these questions there is an Irish form, dated 1738, which purports to be copied from a manuscript of the twelfth century. Fionn would marry no lady whom he could pose. Graidhne, "daughter of the king of the fifth of Ullin," answered everything he asked, and became his wife. Altogether there are thirty-two questions in the several versions. Among them are: What is blacker than the raven? (There is death.) What is whiter than the snow? (There is the truth.) 'Fionn's Questions,' Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, III, 36; 'Fionn's Conversation with Ailbhe,'Heroic Gaelic Ballads, by the same, pp. 150, 151.
The familiar ballad-knight of A, B is converted in C into an "unco knicht," who is the devil, a departure from the proper story which is found also in 2 J. The conclusion of C,
As soon as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame,
reminds us of the behavior of trolls and nixes under like circumstances, but here the naming amounts to a detection of the Unco Knicht's quiddity, acts as an exorcism, and simply obliges the fiend to go off in his real character. D belongs with C: it was given by the reciter as a colloquy between the devil and a maiden.
The earlier affinities of this ballad can be better shown in connection with No 2.
Translated, after B and A, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 181: Herder, Volkslieder, I, 95, after A d.
A
a. Broadside in the Rawlinson collection, 4to, 566, fol. 193, Wood, E. 25, fol. 15. b. Pepys, III, 19, No 17. c. Douce, II, fol. 168 b. d. Pills to Purge Melancholy, IV, 130, ed. 1719.
1 There was a lady of the North Country,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
And she had lovely daughters three.
Fa la la la, fa la la la ra re
2 There was a knight of noble worth
Which also lived in the North.
3 The knight, of courage stout and brave,
A wife he did desire to have.
4 He knocked at the ladie's gate
One evening when it was late.
5 The eldest sister let him in,
And pin'd the door with a silver pin.
6 The second sister she made his bed,
And laid soft pillows under his head.
7 The youngest daughter that same night,
She went to bed to this young knight.
8 And in the morning, when it was day,
These words unto him she did say:
9 'Now you have had your will,' quoth she,
'I pray, sir knight, will you marry me?'
10 The young brave knight to her replyed,
'Thy suit, fair maid, shall not be deny'd.
- ↑ 'Capt. Wedderburn's Courtship,' 12: What's higher than the tree? (heaven). Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 203, l. 11, 206, l. 3; What grows without a root? (a stone).
