Hardyknute

DESCRIPTION: "Stately stepp'd he east the wall, And stately stepp'd he west." The hero had thirteen sons; nine are dead. The Norse king comes to invade. Hardyknute is called upon to fight. Others also serve at the Battle of Largs, and the Norse are defeated
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Wardlaw (1677-c.1727, according to Whielaw-Ballads)
EARLIEST DATE: 1724 (Ramsay)
KEYWORDS: battle Scotland
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Oct 2, 1263 - Battle of Largs
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 335-345, "Hardyknute" (1 text)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 205-209, "Hardyknute" (1 text)
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry II, pp. 105-121, "Hardyknute" (1 text)
Rimbault-Musical IllustrationsOfBishopPercysReliques XXIII, p. 64, "Hardyknute" (1 partial text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Allan Ramsay, The Ever Green (Being a Collection of Scots Poems Wrote by the Ingenious before 1600) (Edinburgh: Allan Ramsay, 1724 ("Digitized by Google")), Vol. II pp. 247-264, "Hardyknute" (1 text)
Michael Brander, _Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads_, 1975 (page references to the 1993 Barnes & Noble edition), pp. 221-230, "Hardyknute or The Battle of Largs" (1 text)
James Johnson, Editor, _The Scots Musical Museum_ [1853 edition], volume III, #280, p. 289, "Hardyknute; Or, the Battle of Largs" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST MBra221 (Partial)
Roud #8180
NOTES [79 words]: It is widely (I believe universally) agreed that this is not a folk song, but it appears in some old collections, so it goes in the Index.
I assume the name "Hardyknute" is inspired by the name of Harthecnut, one of the sons of King Cnut, who was King of England 1040-1042; the name would properly be spelled HARÐACNUT/Harðacnut, which to someone who didn't know the Old English alphabet (in which the letter eth, Ð/ð, was pronounced "th") would look like "Hardecnut." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: MBra221

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