Harpers of Bretayne heard this tale and made
the lay and called it after the king
"That Orfeo hight, as men well wote; Good is the lay, sweet is the
note!"
The ballad which represents the debris of this romance has only been
recovered in a single text, from the memory of an old man in Unst,
Shetland, and it is incomplete in verse-form, though the reciter remembered
the gist of the story. This version of the ballad is further complicated by
the fact that the old man sang it to a refrain which appears to be Unst
pronunciation of Danish--a startling instance of phonetic tradition.
It is not, however, to be understood from this that it was impossible for
Shakespeare to have heard this ballad; English versions _may_ have been
current in his time. But even so, the ballad would add nothing to the
knowledge he might gain elsewhere; it is simply a short form of the romance
altered by tradition.[67]
There are half-a-dozen other English and Scottish ballads concerning
fairies, none of much importance touching our present theme. They may be
best studied in Child's collection, Nos. 35-41, where under _Tam Lin_ he
has put together the main features of fairy-lore revealed in traditional
ballads.[68] One or two such points may be noted here.
We have seen that Ogier saw the supernatural lady after plucking and eating
an apple from a tree.
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