The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward or The Lord of Lorn and the Flas Steward or The Lord of Lorn is
Child ballad
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...
number 271 (
Roud
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
113).
A ballad, ''Lord of Lorn and the False Steward'', was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1580, with a note that it is to the tune of ''
Greensleeves
"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves" was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationer's Company in September 1580,Frank Kidson, ''English Fol ...
''.
Synopsis
The son of the
Lord of Lorn mastered his schoolwork quickly, and his father sent him to France, with a steward, to learn foreign languages. The steward starved him and, when he went to drink from a river, followed to drown him. The son pleaded for mercy. The steward stripped him naked, gave him rags, and sent him out to beg service. He went to work for a shepherd.
The steward sold the clothing and
set himself up as the lord of Lorn on the money, persuading the Duke of France's daughter to marry him. The son was in the duke's lands, and the lady noticed him, summoned him to find out why he was so mournful. He did not tell her the story, but she took him into her service. The steward could not persuade her otherwise, and the duke made him the groom of the stables. One day when a horse kicked him, he told it that it did not know who it was kicking. The lady demanded his story of him. He told her he had sworn an oath never to tell, and she told him not to tell her, but to ignore her and
tell the horse. He did so.
The lady persuaded her father to put off the wedding three months and wrote a letter to the Lord of Lorn. He summoned up his men and went to the castle and established there who was his son, and who the traitor. The Duke of France had the steward executed and married his daughter to the true son.
Variants
The story is apparently derived from the
romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
''
Roswall and Lillian ''Roswall and Lillian'' is a medieval Scottish chivalric romance.Laura A. Hibbard, ''Medieval Romance in England'' p290 New York Burt Franklin,1963 A late appearing tale, it nevertheless draws heavily on folkloric motifs for its account of an exile ...
''. These tales are part of a group of folktales, the best known being ''
The Goose Girl
"The Goose Girl" (german: Die Gänsemagd) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in ''Grimm's Fairy Tales'' in 1815 (KHM 89). It is of Aarne-Thompson type 533.
The story was first translated into English b ...
''.
[Helen Child Sargent, ed; George Lymn Kittredge, ed ''English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Cambridge Edition'' p 586 Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 1904]
See also
*
The Sleeping Prince
*
Udea and her Seven Brothers
*
The Golden Bracelet
References
External links
''The Lord of Lorn''
Child Ballads
Fictional servants
Year of song unknown
False hero
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