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"The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea" is Child ballad number 36. [1]
"The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea" is Child ballad number 36. [1]
A young man, transformed into a laily (loathly, or loathsome) worm, tells his story: his father married an evil woman as his stepmother, and she transformed him into a worm and his sister into a mackerel. His sister combed his hair every Saturday. He has killed seven knights, and if the man he was speaking to was not his father, he would be the eighth.
His father sends for the stepmother, who claims his children are at court. He makes her use her silver wand to turn his son back, and then her magic horn to summon the fish, although the daughter holds back rather than let the stepmother transform her again.
The father burns the stepmother at the stake.
This ballad has motifs in common with "The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh", "Kemp Owyne", and more with "Allison Gross", but is an independent one, and a traditional one, unretouched by literary forms. [2]
The sister can comb the hair in "Allison Gross" because she still has her human form; Francis James Child believed that part of the original tale has been lost, in which she could assume her human form again for part of the week. [3]
The horn has a logical plot function in this tale, unlike "Allison Gross". [4] It is psychologically sound that the fish wishes to avoid her stepmother, but that plot twist leaves her still a fish; Child believed that, here, also, part of the tale was lost. [5]
In mythology, folklore and speculative fiction, shape-shifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through unnatural means. The idea of shape-shifting is in the oldest forms of totemism and shamanism, as well as the oldest existent literature and epic poems such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad. The concept remains a common literary device in modern fantasy, children's literature and popular culture.
Sir Aldingar is Child ballad 59. Francis James Child collected three variants, two fragmentary, in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. All three recount the tale where a rebuffed Sir Aldingar slanders his mistress, Queen Eleanor, and a miraculous champion saves her.
"Allison Gross" is a traditional ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad #35. It tells the story of "the ugliest witch in the north country" who tries to persuade a man to become her lover and then punishes him by a transformation.
The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh, also known as The Laidly Worm of Bamborough, is a Northumbrian ballad about a princess who is changed into a dragon.
"Kemp Owyne" is Child Ballad number 34.
"Hind Horn" is a traditional English and Scottish folk ballad.
Fair Annie is Child ballad number 62, existing in several variants.
The Gay Goshawk is Child ballad number 96.
"Rose the Red and White Lily" is Child ballad number 103.
"The Fair Flower of Northumberland" is a folk ballad.
Leesome Brand is Child Ballad number 15 and Roud #3301.
Lord Lovel is number 75 of the ballads anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century, and exists in several variants. This ballad is originally from England, originating in the Late Middle Ages, with the oldest known versions being found in the regions of Gloucestershire, Somerset, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Wiltshire.
"Gil Brenton" is Child ballad 5, Roud 22, existing in several variants.
"The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is an English Arthurian ballad, collected as Child Ballad 31. Found in the Percy Folio, it is a fragmented account of the story of Sir Gawain and the loathly lady, which has been preserved in fuller form in the medieval poem The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. The loathly lady episode itself dates at least back to Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Unlike most of the Child Ballads, but like the Arthurian "King Arthur and King Cornwall" and "The Boy and the Mantle", "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is not a folk ballad but a song for professional minstrels.
"Riddles Wisely Expounded" is a traditional English song, dating at least to 1450. It is Child Ballad 1 and Roud 161, and exists in several variants. The first known tune was attached to it in 1719. The title "Riddles Wisely Expounded" was given by Francis James Child and seems derived from the seventeenth century broadside version "A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded".
Erlinton is #8 of the Child Ballads, the collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. The collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads between 1882 and 1898 by Houghton Mifflin in ten volumes and later reissued in a five volume edition.
"Earl Brand" is a pseudo-historical English ballad.
"Young Andrew" is a folk song catalogued as Child ballad 48.
"Brown Robyn's Confession" is Child ballad 57.
"The King's Dochter Lady Jean" is Child ballad No. 52.
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