Motherwell stated that the story of Child Rowland was a nursery tale in his time,[1] and it is to this tale, for the existence of which we have such good evidence, that Shakespeare almost certainly refers. Its form, as has been pointed out by Mr. Jacobs, is that of a cante-fable,[2] and it has been regarded by him as very probably the foundation story of Milton's Comus.[3] Our folk-tale has thus a great literary interest, and it is well known to what use Browning put the hidden meaning that he discovered in the line:[4]
Child Rowland to the dark tower came.
The lines of Edgar (ut supra) have been generally regarded as a ballad snatch. Child has printed them as such in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads,[5] and Rolfe has written, "The ballad quoted here has never been discovered."[6] The regarding of Edgar's lines as a ballad snatch is mere conjecture, and I wish to indicate what in reality they possibly are. They seem to me to be the repeated lines of verse of a cante-fable.
In recording the folk-tale of Child Rowland Jamieson remarked: "It was recited in a sort of formal, drowsy, measured, monotonous recitative, mixing prose and verse, in the manner of the Icelandic sagas. . . . This peculiarity, so far as my memory could serve me, I have endeavoured to preserve, but of the verses which have been introduced, I cannot answer for the exactness of any, except the stanza put into the mouth of the king of Elfland, which was indelibly impressed upon my memory, long before I knew anything of Shakespeare, by the odd and whimsical manner in which the tailor turned up his nose, and sniffed all about, to imitate the action which 'Fe, fi, fo, fum' is intended to represent."[7]
It is possible that the stanza was "indelibly impressed" on Jamieson's memory long before he "knew anything of Shakespeare," by reason of its being a folk-tale commonplace, and as
