“The Elfin Knight” (Child 2; Roud 12) is a traditional Scottish Folk Ballad of which there are many versions, all dealing with supernatural occurrences, and the commission to perform impossible tasks. The ballad has been collected in different parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, the US, and Canada. As is the case with most traditional folk songs, there have been countless completely different versions recorded of the same ballad. The first broadside version was printed before 1674, and the roots of the song may be considerably older.
In the oldest extant version of this ballad (circa 1600-1650), an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task. She responds with a list of tasks which he must first perform, thus evading rape. The plot is closely related to “Riddles Wisely Expounded” (Child 1), in which the Devil proposes to carry off a woman unless she can answer a number of riddles. Later versions invert the direction of desire, with the elf proposing tasks which the lady must perform in order to be accepted as his lover.
The first verse usually opens with the introduction of the title character:
The elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Blaw, blaw, blaw, wind blaw.
He blaws his horn both lewd and shril.
The wind hath blown my plaid awa.
Note that this verse appears to be taken directly from “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight”, (Child 4) in this ballad, the horn is magic and arouses desire in the hearer. Meanwhile, a maid lies in bed, wishing she could marry the knight. Upon her speaking these words, the knight appears, telling her he will marry her if she will perform numerous tasks, all impossible.
“For thou must shape a sark to me,
Without any cut or heme,” quoth he.
She promptly responds with her own list of impossible tasks, and thereby gains her supernatural husband.
The countering of impossible tasks with other impossible tasks is a common motif in the folktale Aarne-Thompson type 875, the Clever Girl, a fairy tale making use of this motif is The Wise Little Girl. In Celtic folklore, in common with many other European traditions, impossible tasks are often given to a suitor as part of a wedding trial – a well known example would be Culhwch and Olwen from Welsh Brittonic tradition where the 40 impossible tasks are set by the father in law (in this case the giant Ysbadadden Pen Cawr).
The song “Scarborough Fair” is considered a relatively recent variant of “The Elfin Knight”, and both are officially classified as the same ballad. Mark Anderson (1874-1953), a retired lead-miner from Country Durham, England, sang “Scarborough Fair” to Ewan MacColl in 1947. Martin Carthy learnt the song from MacColl’s songbook, and included it on his debut album in 1965. He taught the song to Paul Simon the same year, and Simon and Garfunkel released their own version, which was hugely successful. Prior to this, Bob Dylan used Martin Carthy’s version as the basis of his song “Girl from the North Country” from his second album in 1963.
A similar variant is “Whittingham Fair”, a song that was popular in the north and west of Northumber land, not far from Mark Anderson’s County Durham. There are also several American variants, which differ greatly, among them “My Father Had an Acre of Land”, “The Parsley Vine”, and “The Shirt of Lace”. Several recent Scottish recordings have preserved the “blaw winds blaw” refrain from the earliest written versions of the ballad.
