Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was made.

ELLEN OF VILLENSKOV AND OTHER BALLADS

by GEORGE BORROW

by

London: printed for private circulation 1913

London

printed for private circulation

p. 5ELLEN OF VILLENSKOV.

p. 5

There lies a wold in Vester Haf, There builds a boor his hold; And thither he carries hawk and hound, He’ll stay through winter’s cold.

He takes with him both hound and cock, He means there long to stay; The wild deer in the wood that are For his arrival pay.

He hews the oak and poplar tall, He fells the good beech tree; Then fill’d was the laidly Trold with spite That he should make so free.

p. 6He hews him posts, he hews him balks, He early toils and late; Out spake the Trolds within the hill:  “Who knocks at such a rate?”

p. 6

Then up and spake the youngest Trold, As emmet small to view: “O here is come a Christian man, But verily he shall rue.”

Upstood the smallest of the Trolds, And round he roll’d his eyes: “O we will hie to the yeoman’s house, And o’er him hold assize.

“He hews away our sheltering wood, Meanwhile shall we be tame? No! I from him his wife will take, And make him suffer shame.”

All the Trolds in the hill that were Wild for the fray upbound; They hie away to the yeoman’s house, Their tails all curling round.

p. 7Seven and a hundred were the Trolds, Their laidliness was great; To the yeoman’s house 

  P 1/7 next