"The Wee Wee Man" is
Child ballad number 38, existing in several variants.
Synopsis
The narrator meets with a wee, wee man. He lifts an enormous stone and throws it, and she thinks that if she were as strong as
Wallace, she could have lifted it to her knee. She asks him where he lives, and he has her come with him to a hall where there is a lady, sometimes explicitly called the
fairy queen, and her ladies, usually twenty-four and so beautiful that the ugliest would make a fit queen of Scotland, but they, and the wee, wee man, instantly vanish.
Versions
Steeleye Span included it in the 1973 album ''
Parcel of Rogues''.
Danish composer
Vagn Holmboe
Vagn Gylding Holmboe (, 20 December 1909 – 1 September 1996) was a Danish composer and teacher.
Life
Vagn Holmboe was born in Horsens, Jutland, into a merchant family of dedicated amateur musicians. Both parents played the piano. His fa ...
set the ballad to music twice, for tenor and small orchestra in 1971 (as
op. 107b), and for mixed choir a cappella in 1972
[Rapoport, Paul (1996). ''The Compositions of Vagn Holmboe''. Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen. pp. 73-75. .]
This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in ''Ballads Weird and Wonderful'' (1912) and illustrated by
Vernon Hill
Vernon W. Hill II (born August 18, 1945) is an American businessman, the founder and former chairman of Metro Bank, a UK retail bank with 77 stores, and assets of £7.4b ($10.6b). He was also the founder, former chairman, president and CEO of ...
.
See also
*
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
External links
''The Wee, Wee Man''
Child Ballads
Year of song unknown
Songwriter unknown
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