(candle, etc.)


LADY ISOBEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT. Mainly after Buchan's version entitled
_The Water o' Wearie's Well_, although it is in another version given
by Buchan, under title of _The Gowans sae Gay_, that the name of the
lady is disclosed, and the elfin nature of the eccentric lover
revealed. In that ballad Lady Isobel falls in love with the elf-knight
on hearing him

"blawing his horn,
The first morning in May,"

and this more tuneful version retains in the first two stanzas a
fading trace of the fairy element and the magic music, the bird, whose
song may be supposed to have caused the lady's heartache, being
possibly the harper in elfin disguise. In most of the versions,
however, the knight is merely a human knave, usually designated as
Fause Sir John, and the lady is frequently introduced as May Colven or
Colvin or Collin or Collean, though also as Pretty Polly. The story is
widely circulated, appearing in the folk-songs of nearly all the
nations of northern and southern Europe. It has been suggested that
the popular legend may be "a wild shoot from the story of Judith and
Holofernes." _Dowie_, doleful.


TOM THUMBE. After Ritson, with omissions. Ritson prints from a
manuscript dated 1630, the oldest copy known to be extant, but the
story itself can be traced much further back and was evidently a prime
favorite with the English rustics. The plain, often doggerel verse,