Text 11

THREE RAVENS

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

With a downe

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

They were as blacke as they might be,

With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe

The one of them said to his mate,

"Where shall we our breakfast take?"

"Down in yonder greene field,

There lies a knight slain under his shield.

"His hounds they lie downe at his feete,

So well they can their master keepe.

"His haukes they flie so eagerly,

There's no fowle dare him come me."

Downe there comes a fallow doe,

As great with yong as she might goe.

She lift up his bloudy hed,

And kist his wounds that were so red.

She got him up upon her backe,

And carried him to earthen lake.

She buried him before the prime,

She was dead herselfe ere even-song time.

God send every gentleman

Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman.

The above ballad is really beautiful. The well-known translation – "Ворон к ворону летит…" – was made by Alexander Pushkin. When we call it a translation, we stretch the definition a bit. Yet the departures from the original wording made by Pushkin do not compromise the entire work. It is not surprising that during Pushkin’s lifetime the Russian version was set to music three times! It accounts for the poem’s popularity.

2.2 Robin Hood, the Superman

The ballads differ greatly in their themes, of course. If one scrutinizes their subjects attentively, one will see that by far the largest group of ballads deals with the stuff of tabloid journalism—sensation tales of lust, revenge, and domestic crime. Unwed mothers slay their newborn babies; lovers unwilling to marry their pregnant mistresses brutally murder the poor women. Brothers kill one another out of jealousy or in rivalry over a girl. As for humourous ballads, these with monotonous regularity have to do with the shabby dealings of incompatible married couples: the cuckold, the shrewish wife, the discontented spouse who is frustrated in the attempt to “do in” the other partner. Some other ballads treat the relations of supernatural beings and human folk, which is the concern of some of the finest English ballads, like The Elfin Knight.

Apart from earlier 19^th century translations, the first English folk ballads to get widespread popularity due to translation into Russian were the ballads about Robin Hood. Originally, those were quite a common commodity as early as the end of the 14^th century. In the 15th century several chroniclers, both Scottish and English, allude to the popularity of the ballads about Robin Hood and his merry men. Consider Text 12.