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"Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" (
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 ...
#4;
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 ...
#21) is the English common name representative of a very large class of
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an
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 ...
s. The most frequently collected variant, The Outlandish Knight or ''May Colvin'' tells the tale of a young woman who elopes with a knight who has promised to marry her (and who in some instances uses magic to charm her) but who then tries to murder her to get money, clothes and horses. By a quick-witted ruse she manages to kill him instead, and in many versions she is helped to keep this experience from her parents by a resourceful parrot. The main variant has been collected frequently from traditional singers in England, Scotland, Ireland and North America.Roud Fold Song Indexes, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library https://www.vwml.org/search?ts=1489607963291&collectionfilter=RoudFS;RoudBS&advqtext=0, rn, 21# Retrieved 2017/03/14


Synopses

Three main English language variants of this group of ballads, with rather different plots, have been published:


The Gowans Sae Gae

Lady Isabel hears the horn of an elf-knight and wishes she had the horn and the knight "to sleep in my bosom". He immediately appears and asks her to go to the greenwood. They ride there, and he tells her that he has killed seven kings' daughters there and she is to be the eighth. She suggests that he put his head on her knee "that we may hae some rest before that I die". She puts him to sleep with a "small charm" and after tying him up with his own belt she kills him with his own dagger. This version is written in couplets, with a refrain as second and fourth line:
Fair lady Isabel sits in her bower sewing,
Aye as the gowans grow gay
There she heard an elf-knight blawing his horn.
The first morning in May

"Gowan" is a name used for a number of plants with yellow flowers, but unless modified by another word, it usually means the common daisy, ''Bellis perennis'', also called the "may gowan".
May Day May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Festivities may also be held the night before, known as May Eve. Tr ...
, the morning of May 1, and May Eve, the evening of April 30, were important holidays with pagan connotations. This variant is Child's A.


The Water o Wearie's Well

A king's daughter is full of woe. A harpist plays and everyone else falls asleep. He takes her on the back of his horse to Wearie's Well. He tells her to wade in, and when she expresses her doubts - when she is up to her knee and then her waist - says that no harm will befall her and that he has often watered his horse there. When she is up to her chin he tells her:
Seven king's-daughters I've drownd there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
And I'll make you the eight o them,
And ring the common bell
She asks him for a kiss to "comfort me" and when he leans down to kiss her she pulls him from the saddle and drowns him. She swims to the shore and thanks God that "The dangers she o'ercame". This version was Child's B.


The Outlandish Knight

The Roud Folk Song Index lists about 60 names for this group of songs, most of which refer to this variant, including ''Fause'' (or ''False'') ''Sir John'', ''May Colvin'' (or variants), ''Go Bring Me Some of Your Mother's Gold'', and ''Pretty Polly''. This variant includes Child's C to F, and the vast majority of versions listed by Roud, including many named ''Lady Isabel and the Elf-knight'' or variants thereon. A knight offers to take a young woman to his home in the north and marry her, and suggests she takes "some of your father's gold and some of your mother's fee"(Child F),Child, F J; The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Vol, 1; 1882, No 4, "Lady Isabel and the Elf-knight" version F as well as two horses (often white for her, dapple-grey for him) from her father's stables (where there are almost always "thirty and three"). They ride, sometimes to the side of a river, or more often to the banks of the sea, where he tells her to dismount:
'Mount off, mount off, thy lily-white steed,
And deliver it unto me
For six pretty maidens I have drowned here
And the seventh thou shalt be.'Roud, S, and Bishop, J; The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs; London, 2012

He tells her to take off her clothing, sometimes item by item (Child E), as it is too costly to be allowed to rot in the sea. She asks him either to turn his back:
For it is not fitting that such a ruffian
A naked woman should see. (Child E)
or to cut down the local vegetation:
'Go fetch the sickle to cut the nettle
That grows so near the brim,
For fear it should tangle my golden locks
Or freckle my lily white skin' (Child F)
and then either she pushes him into the sea or "seizes him by the middle so sma" and throws him in. He asks her to help him out, but she refuses:
'Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,
Lie there instead of me,
For if six pretty maidens thou hast drowned here,
The seventh has drowned thee.'
She rides home, leading the spare horse. Sometimes the story ends here, but often when she arrives home a parrot comments on how late she has returned, saying he is afraid "Some ruffian hath led you astray". She promises him a luxurious cage if he keeps her secret, and when her father asks the parrot what makes him "speak before it is day" he replies that a cat was going to eat him. His mistress promises him that:
"Thy cage shall be made of the glittering gold,
And the door of the best ivory"
In performance the last syllable of the fourth line is sometimes repeated twice, and then the line is repeated:
The seventh has drowned thee. thee, thee, The seventh has drowned thee.
In Scotland this variant is sometimes called May Colvin (various alternative spellings occur). Child gives two versions of this. Child's D version is very similar to other texts except that the young woman is named as May Colven and the knight as False Sir John. In the second the knight uses a charm to make an initially reluctant May Collin go with him, and the story ends when, after the parrot episode, she goes to her parents, tells them what has happened, and they go to the scene of the crime to find and bury the body "for fear it should be seen".


Publication history

The earliest known version of any of these variants is either a
broadside Broadside or broadsides may refer to: Naval * Broadside (naval), terminology for the side of a ship, the battery of cannon on one side of a warship, or their near simultaneous fire on naval warfare Printing and literature * Broadside (comic ...
entitled ''The False Knight Outwitted'' sometime in the second half of the eighteenth century (also the earliest "Outlandish Knight" text and Child's version F), or ''May Colvin'', published in Herd's "Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs" in 1776 (Child's version C). The earliest printed version of "The Gowans sae Gae" was in "Ancient Ballads and Songs Volume 1" by Peter Buchan while "The Water o Wearie's Well" was first published in Volume 2 of the same book. Both volumes were published in 1828. ''The Outlandish Knight'' variant was repeatedly printed by broadside publishers both in London and the provinces. Most broadside texts are fairly similar to one another, and often start:
An outlandish knight came from the north lands
And He came a'wooing of me
He told me he'd take me to the north lands
And there he would marry me.


Versions in 18th and 19th century ballad collections

*''May Colvin'' was published in "Ancient and modern Scottish songs, heroic ballads, etc.; Vol. 1" (1776) by David Herd. *''May Colvin'' was published in "The Scottish Minstrel", (1821), by Robert Archibald Smith. *''May Collin'' was published in "A Ballad Book" (First published in 1823 for private distribution, re-published in 1880) by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. *''May Collean'' was published in "The Scottish Ballads" (1828) by Robert Chambers. *''The Gowans sae Gae'' and ''The Water o'Wearies Well'' were published in "Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland" (1828) by Peter Buchan. *''The Outlandish Knight'' was published in "Ancient poems, ballads, and songs" (1846) by James Henry Dixon. *''May Colvin'' was published in "Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern" (1846) by William Motherwell. *''May Colvin'' was published in "The Ballads and songs of Ayrshire" (1847) by James Paterson. *Two texts of ''May Colvin'' were published in "The Book of Scottish Ballads" (1857) by Alexander Whitelaw. These are Herd's and Motherwell's versions. *''The Water o Wearie's Well'' was included in "Early ballads illustrative of history, traditions and customs" by Robert Bell, published in 1861. *''The Outlandish Knight'' was published in "Northumbrian minstrelsy : a collection of the ballads, melodies and small pipe-tunes of Northumbria", (1881) by J Collingwood Bruce and John Stokoe. *Child published ''The Gowans Sae Gae'' (one text), ''The Water o'Wearies Well'' (one text), ''May Collen/Collin'' (two texts), and two texts of the ''Outlandish Knight'' type in "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Part 1" (1882). *''The Outlandish Knight'' was published in "Shropshire Folk-Lore" (1883) by Charlotte S Burne. *''The Outlandish Knight'' was published in "Traditional Tunes" (1891) by Frank Kidson. *''May Collean'' was published in "The Ballads and Songs of Carrick" (c.1892) by Rev. Roderick Lawson. *''The Outlandish Knight'' was published in "Songs & Ballads of Northern England" (1899) by Stokoe & Reay.


Other song books

*
Arthur Quiller-Couch Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (; 21 November 186312 May 1944) was a British writer who published using the pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication '' The Oxford Book of English Verse ...
, (ed.) ''The Oxford Book of Ballads'', 1910. *
Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...
; "American Songbag", ''Pretty Polly''; 1927. *
Cecil Sharp Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English-born collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was the pre-eminent activist in the development of t ...
, ''English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians'', Oxford University Press, London, 1952. vol. 1, p. 7. * R. Vaughan Williams & A. L. Lloyd, ''The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs'', Penguin Books, 1959, pp. 80–81 (as "The Outlandish Knight") *''The Outlandish Knight'', "Songs of the Midlands", Roy Palmer, 1972. * Geoffrey Grigson (ed.), ''The Penguin Book of Ballads'', Penguin Books, 1975. . pp. 40–41 * Steve Roud and Julia Bishop, (eds), "The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs", 2012, . pp 311–313, 490-491. (as "The Outlandish Knight")


Collection history

The Roud Folk Song Index lists about 367 instances of this group of ballads collected from traditional singers, with the great majority being of the ''Outlandish Knight'' story. 198 were collected in the USA, 120 in England, 31 in Canada, 9 in Ireland, 8 in Scotland, and 1 in Australia. This is probably an underestimate as it is based on named performers, and collectors haven't always named the sources of the songs they publish. Steve Roud and Julia Bishop point out that this is one of about half a dozen Child ballads that have been most consistently popular, having been collected "time and again all over the English-speaking world"


Field recordings

Many of these are available to listen online.


Discussion


Relationships and origins

These ballads have received a lot of attention from folklorists and other scholars. There is some consensus that they derive from a family of ballads related to the Dutch ballads about
Heer Halewijn Heer Halewijn (also known as ''Van Here Halewijn'' and ''Jan Albers'', and in English ''The Song of Lord Halewijn'') is a Dutch folk tale which survives in folk ballad. Although the first printed version of the song only appears in an anthology p ...
. Discussion is sometimes confusing as both an individual variant and the group as a whole can be referred to as a ballad by scholars. The ballad family is known throughout Europe and is described by Child as the ballad which "has perhaps obtained the widest circulation".Child 1965(v1):22. He notes that the Scandavian and German versions (both Low and High German) are the fullest versions, while the southern European ones are rather shorter, and the English versions somewhat brief. The Dutch song ''Heer Halewijn'' is one of the earlier (13th century) versions of this tale, fuller and preserving older elements, including such things as the murderer's head speaking after the heroine has beheaded him, attempting to get her to do tasks for him. At least 60 French, or French-Canadian versions have been collected and these almost all end in the same location as the English version, on a riverbank or by the sea, a motif only found elsewhere in the extensive and widespread Polish variants.Lloyd p. 142. Numerous German variants are known. Child says 26 German variants but Lloyd, writing more than a century later, claims over 250. In some, the heroine rescues herself; in others her brother rescues her; and in still others, the murderer succeeds but her brother kills him after the fact. In some of them, the dead women reappear as doves and attempt to warn the latest victim. At least eleven Danish variants are known, often including the heroine's meeting with the sister or the men of the murderer and dealing with them as well. An Icelandic version has a very short account of the tale. Other variants are northern Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,Child 1965(v1):45. and Magyar. In his introduction to this group of ballads Child discusses their place in European culture. He places them in the group of ballads and stories often named after what is considered to be the most complete example, the Dutch ballad ''Heer Halewijn'', he describes ballads from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Transylvania, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France and he reviews theories put forward to explain the origin of this ballad family and the nature of the "Outlandish Knight". He mentions theories that the ballad draws on stories about elves, or about the nix or neck, malevolent water spirits in German folklore, and that it is derived from the Judith and Holofernes story in the
Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
. Holger Olof Nygard, in an article in "The Journal of American Folklore" discusses the various theories put forward about the origin of the ballads in this group and what he calls its "continental analogues". These include: *Svend Grundtvig's suggestion that the ballads are derived from some "obscured elf song" and that it derived from a Scandinavian source. Nygard points out that elves are not considered predatory in Scandinavian folklore and that the only ballad in which the male protagonist is referred to as an elf is Child's A version. *Franz Böhme's theory that the knight was originally a nix, or
neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...
, a water spirit found in the folklore of Germanic people - Child seems to have accepted this idea at first but dropped it after Grundtvig and others asked how such a creature could be killed by drowning. *The notion of
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...
and others that the story may have derived from the French
Bluebeard "Bluebeard" (french: Barbe bleue, ) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in '' Histoires ou contes du temps passé''. The tale tells the s ...
tales. Nygard says the tale and ballads have been separate and distinct as far as records go back, and that this is a case of "polygenesis of a narrative idea". *Nygard dismisses Franz Holz's suggestion that the tale originates in the mediaeval idea that maiden's blood could cure leprosy because apart from an odd Swiss ballad no version gives any indication what the knight does with the maidens (apart from killing them) or suggests he is in ill-health. *Leon Pineau suggested that the knight represented "the spirits of shadows, death, night and winter, finally overcome by the warmth of summer" and the murdered maids representing months of the year. Nygard sees this as an example of "the tendency to write the ballad group's early history not on its own terms but on terms dictated by something else". *Paul de Keyser's psychoanalytic theory, based on Dutch versions in which the hero is beheaded, makes the ballad group about "punishment by castration arising from the suppressed desires of the singer". But the girl's brother only has a role in a few versions of the ballad. *Last but not least, Nygard discusses the idea put forward by Sophus Bugge that the story itself descends from the biblical tale of Judith and Holofernes. But, among other objections, Nygard points out that Holofernes didn't intend to kill Judith - he wanted sex with her - and hadn't murdered a succession of other maidens either, yet those murders seem to be at the heart of the ballad. He points out too that Bugge cherry-picks details occurring only in widely scattered variants that happen to fit with his biblical theory.Nygard, Holger Olof. "Ballad Source Study: Child Ballad No. 4 as Exemplar." The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 68, no. 268, 1955, pp. 141–152., www.jstor.org/stable/537249. Two sentences in Nygard's conclusion are worth quoting:
"We are left with a handful of improbable impossibilities as to the source of the ballad. And for these we may well be thankful, for their authors have trod the sands of surmise and have taught us how to avoid them, if we will but learn by example.


Age

Child takes it for granted that the Scottish and English ballads he publishes are old, and that they are the remnants of more elaborate originals:
"although the best English forms are not without ancient and distinctive marks, most of these have been eliminated, and the better ballads are very brief"
In this he follows Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe who writes of the version of ''May Collin'' in his "Ballad Book" (Child's version D):
"This ballad appears modern from a great many expressions, yet I am certain that it is old".
But Steve Roud points out that as the two earliest British versions are late 18th century and
"Despite its archaic feel and close foreign relatives, the ballad does not seem to be very old, at least in Britain"


Locality

There have been various other rationalisations, attaching the story to specific locations and historical events: for example to
Gilles de Laval Gilles de Rais (c. 1405 – 26 October 1440), Baron de Rais (), was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later ...
in the early fifteenth century. The variant ''May Collean'' has been attached, as a legend, to the coast of
Ayrshire Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of ...
, where the heroine was said to come from the family Kennedy of Colzean. A rocky promontory called Gamesloup, on the Ayrshire coast, is pointed to by local people as the spot where the knight drowned his victims. This local association is noted by
A. L. Lloyd Albert Lancaster Lloyd (29 February 1908 – 29 September 1982),Eder, Bruce. (29 September 1982A. L. Lloyd - Music Biography, Credits and Discography AllMusic. Retrieved on 2013-02-24. usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English fo ...
who quotes it as an example of a ballad which "so strikes the common imagination that people want to make the piece their own by giving it a local setting".


Authenticity of ''The Gowans sae Gae''

There have been doubts raised about the authenticity of Child's A version, ''The Gowans sae Gae'', the suggestion being that it was composed by Peter Buchan (editor of "Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland" (1828), the source of Child's A and B versions) or one of his informants,. This is referred to by D K Wilgus:
In addition to the now-discredited notion that the "Lady Isabel" form is the Scottish original of the non-supernatural English texts, two explanations of the "Elf-Knight" text are possible. One, based on the comparative evidence, is that the "Lady Isabel" text is a palpable fraud perpetuated by Peter Buchan with the probable help of a "supplier". This is the option chosen by Nygard. The other possibility, argued by David Buchan, is that "Lady Isabel" is a "stray" from Scandinavia which turned up in Aberdeenshire. In terms of the Anglo-American tradition of the "Outlandish Knight" the "Lady Isabel" text is of little importance, since it seems to have had no influence except in the scholarly titling of variants.Variation and Continuity in Ballads Past and Present; Wilgus D K; in The Anglo-American Ballad: A Folklore Casebook, Ed. Dianne Dugaw; 1995
Wilgus goes on to say:
Nygard depended to some extent on extratextual information in being influenced by the suspicion of texts from Peter Buchan's collection, voiced by Child and other scholars. Ironically, Child's suspicions were largely based on the subliterary character of other texts, while "Lady Isabel" is literarily superior.
Neither of Buchan's variants is found at all widely in the tradition, if they are found at all. Versions titled ''Isabelle and the Elf-Knight'' are mainly versions of the "Outlandish Knight" variant.


Cultural relationships


Standard references

*
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 ...
21 *
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 ...
4


Textual variants

Several variations of the ballad were classified by
Francis James Child Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of ...
that feature a "Lord" instead of an elf knight. Some variations have a parrot at the end, who promises not to tell what happened. In some of these, the parrot is eaten by the cat. The variations of the ballad vary on some of the key characters and details: Other titles: * An Outlandish Rover * The Highway Robber * The Old Beau * The False-Hearted KnightLloyd p.144 *If I Take Off My Silken Stays The Roud Folk Song Index lists 68 different titles. "The Outlandish Knight" is the most frequent.


Songs that refer to Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight

The dialogue between the Lady and the parrot, which appears in some versions, was made into a comic song: "Tell Tale Polly", published in ''Charley Fox's Minstrel Companion'' (ca. 1860).


Motifs

Another related ballad, "
Hind Etin "Hind Etin" (Roudbr>33 Child 41) is a folk ballad 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 ...
" (
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 '' ...
#41), also begins with abduction and rape by an elf, but ends with the pair falling in love and living happily together. Many of the same motifs are found in Child Ballad 48, " Young Andrew".


Literature

Various forms of these ballads show great similarity to the
fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cult ...
s '' Fitcher's Bird'' and ''
Bluebeard "Bluebeard" (french: Barbe bleue, ) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in '' Histoires ou contes du temps passé''. The tale tells the s ...
''.


Art

Arthur Rackham Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was an English book illustrator. He is recognised as one of the leading figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work is noted for its robust pen and ink drawings, ...
's "May Colvin and the Parrot" illustrates this ballad. Kentucky artist and ballad singer Daniel Dutton has a painting of this ballad, titled "False Sir John", on his Ballads of the Barefoot Mind website.


Music

Variants of the song are commonly sung to several different tunes. The following tune was collected by
Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...
in 1908 from Mr Hilton in South Walsham,
Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...
. It was published in the ''Folk Song Journal'' of
English Folk Dance and Song Society The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS, or pronounced 'EFF-diss') is an organisation that promotes English folk music and folk dance. EFDSS was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dan ...
(IV 123), and included in ''The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs''.


Recordings


See also

* List of the Child Ballads


References


Further reading

*Francis James Child, ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', Volume 1, New York: Dover Publications, 1965. *Meijer, Reinder. ''Literature of the Low Countries: A Short History of Dutch Literature in the Netherlands and Belgium.'' New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1971, page 35. *Marcello Sorce Keller, "Sul castel di mirabel: Life of a Ballad in Oral Tradition and Choral Practice", ''Ethnomusicology'', XXX(1986), no. 3, 449-469.


External links

*"Scottish Ballads Online
Child Ballad #4: Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight
Seven variants from Francis J Child's collection with a further three from the appendix and a link to versions from the living tradition. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lady Isabel And The Elf Knight Ballads Child Ballads Isabel Elves Isabel Jean Ritchie songs