the Irish tale of The King of Ireland's Son, to which I have before referred,[1] the following words are repeated in much the same circumstances as that to which the rime quoted from Child Rowland refers: "the giant came out, and he said, 'I feel the smell of the melodious lying Irishman under (i.e. in) my little sod of country.'"[2] It will be readily seen that this repeated prose phrase resembles the lines in King Lear, but resemblance does not end there. The tale of The King of Ireland's Son, both as regards plot and detailed incidents, compares interestingly with that of Child Rowland. To draw the parallelisms would be tedious, and unnecessary to the proof of what is required; but as Alfred Nutt has pointed out Hans Andersen's Travelling Companion as an analogue,[3] I would wish to remark that the latter tale resembles in at least one particular instance the tale of Child Rowland. The resemblance consists in the account given of the abode of the troll in the Travelling Companion,[4] and that of the King of Elfland in the tale of Child Rowland.[5] These instances I quote because they give subsidiary aid in arriving at the following possible conclusions in relation to Edgar's lines in King Lear:
ballad can be found incorporating them.
(2) The lines "Fi, fo, fum," etc., are the repeated verse lines of a cante-fable.
(3) The cante-fable Shakespeare had in mind was not, as
Halliwell thought, probably Jack and the Giants, but rather Child Rowland.(4) That the words
"Child Rowland to the dark tower came.
His word was still"
is either part of the cante-fable, or else possibly Shakespeare's own words.
