24 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



His destination is "London toun" in A and G, and in E he 



". . . . must needs be gone, 

 To visit the king of fair Scotland." 



In the third stanza Lord Lovel promises to return "In a year or 

 two or three at the most." This is also the time limit in all other 

 versions of Child's H. In variant F he is to return "before six 

 months are past," in A he is to be gone two years, in G and / three 

 years, and in B, C, and D seven years. In all versions but F he 

 returns before the expiration of the time to find that his lady-love has 

 died of grief during his absence, and he also dies the following day; 

 "an easily conceived tragedy, as Henderson says, "if it but seldom 

 happens."^ 



The coming back or reappearance of a lover to find that his 

 beloved has died occurs in other European folk-songs and ballads 

 (principally German, Scandinavian and French). The theme has 

 been so thoroughly discussed by Child in his introduction to "Lord 

 Lovel"^ and also more briefly by the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco 

 in her Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs^ that I will merely refer to it 

 here. 



We now come to the most interesting part of the ballad, the 

 burial of the two lovers, and, as Child says, "the beautiful fancy of 

 plants springing from the graves . . . and signifying by the inter- 

 twining of stems or leaves, or in other analogous ways, that an earthly 

 passion has not been extinguished by death. "^ 



c. Analysis of the theme of the intertwining shrubs. 



The underlying idea of the ending in Child's A, B, E, F, and / 

 is the same as in our version. The main theme, however, is not 

 confined to ballads of the Lord Lovel type, for it also occurs in "Earl 

 Brand," "The Douglas Tragedy," "Barbara Allen," "Fair Janet," 

 "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,"."Fair Margaret and Sweet William," 

 "Lady Alice" and "Prince Robert." 



In all these there is quite a diversity in the places of burial. 

 The lovers most often are buried in the church choir (or quire), and 



^ Henderson, T. F., The Ballad in Literature, (Cambridge University Press, 1912), 

 pp. 38-39. 



2 Part III, pp. 204-206. Other parallels are cited in Part IV, p. 512; VI, p. 510; 

 VIII, p. 471; IX, p. 225, and X, p. 294. 



^ (London and New York, n. d., Everyman' s Library), pp. 37-38. 



* Part I, p. 96. 



The theme has also been discussed in Mclusine, IV, 60, 85, and 142, and V, 39. 



