"Hind Etin" (
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 ...
br>
33 Child
A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person young ...
41) is a folk
ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
existing in several variants.
Synopsis
Lady Margaret goes to the woods, and her breaking a branch is questioned by Hind Etin, who takes her with him into the forest. She bears him seven sons, but laments that they are never
christened, nor she herself
churched. One day, her oldest son goes hunting with Hind Etin and asks him why his mother always weeps. Hind Etin tells him, and then one day goes hunting without him. The oldest son takes his mother and brothers and brings them out of the woods. In some variants, they are welcomed back; in all, the children are christened, and their mother, churched.
Motifs
The meeting in the woods is often similar, when not identical, to
Tam Lin's meeting with Fair Janet.
In some variants, the mother's grief expresses itself as hostility to the children, wishing they were rats and she a cat, as in "
Fair Annie
Fair Annie is Child ballad number 62, existing in several variants.
Synopsis
A lord tells Fair Annie to prepare a welcome for his bride, and to look like a maiden. Annie laments that she has borne him seven sons and is pregnant with the eighth; ...
"; her comments inspire a child's suggestion that they try to leave, which is accomplished easily, with no reason why they could not have fled before.
The
etin of the Scottish version is, in Scandinavian and German versions, an
elf-king, a hill-king, a
dwarf-king, or even a
merman
Mermen, the male counterparts of the mythical female mermaids, are legendary creatures, which are male human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down, but may assume normal human shape. Sometimes they are described as hideous and other ...
. Only in the Danish is the ballad found before the nineteenth century; a sixteenth-century Danish form, "Jomfruen og Dværgekongen" (
DgF
''Danmarks gamle Folkeviser'' is a collection of (in principle) all known texts and recordings of the old Danish popular ballads. It drew both on early modern manuscripts, such as Karen Brahes Folio, and much more recent folk-song collecting activi ...
37,
TSB A 54). In some versions, she is lured or forced back to her husband; this may end tragically, with her death from sorrow. The German variant, "Agnes and the Mermaid", has the husband say they must divide the children, and since they have an odd number, they must split one in two.
[Francis James Child, ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', v 1, p 365, Dover Publications, New York 1965]
See also
*
Gil Brenton
*
The Sprig of Rosemary
The Sprig of Rosemary is a Spanish fairy tale collected by Dr. D. Francisco de S. Maspons y Labros in ''Cuentos Populars Catalans''. Andrew Lang included it in ''The Pink Fairy Book''.
It is related to the international cycle of '' The Search fo ...
*
List of the Child Ballads
The Child Ballads is the colloquial name given to a collection of 305 ballads collected in the 19th century by Francis James Child
Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, ...
References
Child Ballads
Year of song unknown
Songwriter unknown
{{Folk-song-stub