King Malcolm and Sir Colvin

DESCRIPTION: Sir Colvin falls ill for love of the king's daughter Jean; she attends him but won't have him unless he vanquishes an elvish knight defending Elrick's hill. He defeats the knight, bringing its hand and rings as proof. Colvin and Jean marry.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1827 (Motherwell) (a fragment from Buchan); 1828 (Buchan)
KEYWORDS: courting disease royalty knight battle marriage derivative
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Child 61 appendix, "King Malcolm and Sir Colvin" (1 text)
Bronson 61, "Sir Cawline" (1 version: Bronson's #2}
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 123-124, "King Malcom and Sir Colvin" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Peter Buchan, Aqncient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland (Edinburgh: W&D Laing, 1828 ("Digitized by "), Vol. II, pp. 6-10, 306, "King Malcolm and Sir Colvin" (1 text)
William Motherwell, Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern (Glasgow: John Wylie, 1827 ("Digitized by Microsoft")), p. lxvi footnote, "King Malcolm and Sir Colvine" (1 text fragment)
Roud #479
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Sir Cawline" [Child 61] (source, some lines, plot)
NOTES [125 words]: The justification for splitting this from Child 61 is that Child relegated "King Malcolm and Sir Colvin" to an Appendix, rather than considering it a version. Otherwise, there is no more reason to separate them than there is to separate "Sir Lionel" [Child 18] and "Old Bangum." In both cases, as Bronson points out in his discussion of "Sir Cawline," the complexities of the source are reduced to its central incident in the derivative. All copies I have seen for this text, including Motherwell's and Christie's [W. Christie, editor, Traditional Ballad Airs (Edinburgh:David Douglas, 1881 (downloadable pdf by University of Edinburgh, 2007)), Vol II, pp. 18-19, "King Malcolm and Sir Colvin" (1 text, 1 tune)], are taken from Bronson's manuscript. - BS
Last updated in version 3.2
File: C061App

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