As You Travel Through Britain, Enjoy The Humour !
“Can you do Gods work with the devils tools?”
If you speak English and travel around Britain, you will come into contact with our nursery rhymes and ballads.
In the late 1800s, Francis Childs, published a collection of old stories…. Ballads from Englands past… many of which have travelled around the globe as stories, anecdotes, poetry and of course music. Joan Baez, Steeleye Dan etc have all used many tales, from Child’s collection, as creative source material.
there are over 300 tales written contained within his collection and I have to say that my favourite is “Lady Isabel And The Elf Knight”.
I remember my history teacher in primary school….I was 8 years old… asking us to memorise this paragraph…
As you travel through Britain, enjoy the humour!
“The Devil always begins by giving thee work that is just, then he tells thee, thou dost just work, therefore thou art just. And then he tells thee, thou art just, and therefore any work thou dost is just.”
It stays with me today.
Yes, of course, there are lessons to be learnt from these ballads…. They were told around smoky fireplaces by illiterate people. A way to teach their children a morale code….often tongue in cheek and often tinted with ‘not so subtle’ sexual innuendo.
I think that the English psyche is heavily imbued with the humour, often found within ballads such as those transcribed by Childs. Wherever you go in the English speaking world, you find irony, and innuendo underscoring almost everything that is spoken…. I think those fireside ballads/tales had a profound affect on who we are as a people.
Anyway, let me give you the synopsis of Lady Isabel and the Ellen knight.
Lady Isabel is betrothed. But….
An elfen knight woods and courts Lady Isabel, using courtesy and enchantment. She eventually succumbs to his ‘charms’, and they elope to the borders of her domain. Her life has become an adventure and travelling with this mysterious stranger is exhilarating. She does not realise, at first, that he is dangerous and will murder her for her jewels…. An inner strength brings her to realise that she is in trouble, so she kills the knight!
When Isabel kills the Elf Knight and takes his horse, sword, and horn, she believes that she has done just work. She has broken his enchantment and has rid the twelve kingdoms of a great evil. Advice she receives to lay down the Elf Knight's tools falls on deaf ears.
But something old is waking in Isabel, something that longs for the gallop and the chase, for bright sun and the rush of wind against the cheek, for glimmering steel and bright blood and the dying of light in the eyes of the slain.
Without the Elf Knight's sword at her side, Isabel feels lost and terrified, but after almost murdering the man she is supposed to marry, she realizes that either she must put the Elf Knight's tools aside or exile herself forever. But already it may be too late, for Isabel is losing herself and within her the Elf Maiden grows in strength and fury.