Some British Ballads (page 2/2)

Frontispiece: Clerk Colvill

The young man clutches his hat with one hand and with the other holds aloft a sword as he kneels at the edge of a pond. From that same pond a mermaid rises up, arms raised, breasts bare. [more...]

Title Page

“Some British Ballads
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Dodd Mead & Co.
New York.” [more...]

Clerk Colvill (chapter head)

This black-and-white line illustration of a mermaid is above the start of the ballad Clerk Colvill.

Young Bekie

The picture shows a young man lying on the floor of a prison cell or castle dungeon [donjon], his hands on his head, and with one ankle chained to the wall. There [...] [more...]

O Waken, Waken, Burd Isbel

“O it fell once upon a day
    Burd Isbel fell asleep,
An’ up it starts the Billy Blind,
    An’ stood at her bed-feet. [more...]

The Gardener

A smiling young man with hauntingly blue eyes stands smiling at the gate to his thatched country cottage. A lady with a country-style scarf and dress addresses him. [more...]

The Twa Corbies

Or, The Two Ravens. Two carrion birds sit discussing what they are going to eat for supper, and one mentions a young man, a knight, lying dead nearby, presumably killed by his lover’s new boyfriend. [more...]

Erlinton

“Erlinton had a fair daughter; I wat he weird her in a great sin;, For he has built a bigly bower,
And a’ to put that lady in. [more...]

Get Up and Bar the Door

The house-wife carries a hot pan of stew by the handle, a cat sits on the hearth by, one assumes, the fire, and the husband looks to his wife even as she in turn looks to the door. [more...]