The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
not of themselves satisfied the folk, which demands
that the battle of wits be attached to some
kind of story.
Hence we get tales and ballads,
from all quarters of the globe, in which somebody's
success or failure is made to depend on the
quality of his or her replies to riddles. In The
Elfin Knight the girl baffles her would-be victor
by a series of impracticable requests.
The position
is reversed in the ballad called Captain
Wedderburn* lyrical variants of which are still
sung in nurseries :
" I had four sisters over the sea,
Peri meri dixi, domine" etc.
wherein the riddles are very ancient and very
popular. These lyrical forms, which are, so to
speak, the ballad with the story or situation eliminated,
may well represent an earlier stage ;
a
fifteenth-century version of the above lyric is
known. Another favourite, perhaps best known
as
King John and the Abbot of Canterbury^ after
Percy's version, has become thoroughly anglicised,
yet bears marks of kinship with widespread
riddle-tales, reaching as far as the Orient.
The motif of a romantic conclusion dependent
upon the outcome of a battle of riddles leads us
to the ballads of elopements, willing or unwilling
;
and thence through a series of complica-
1
Second Series, 162.
3 Second Series, 173.
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