The Dæmon Lover

The Text is from Kinloch's MSS., 'from the recitation of T. Kinnear, Stonehaven.' Child remarks of it that 'probably by the fortunate accident of being a fragment' it 'leaves us to put our own construction upon the weird seaman; and, though it retains the homely ship-carpenter, is on the whole the most satisfactory of all the versions.'


The Story is told more elaborately in a broadside, and resembles Enoch Arden in a certain degree. James Harris, a seaman, plighted to Jane Reynolds, was captured by a press-gang, taken overseas, and, after three years, reported dead and buried in a foreign land. After a respectable interval, a ship-carpenter came to Jane Reynolds, and eventually wedded her, and the loving couple had three pretty children. One night, however, the ship-carpenter being on a three days' journey, a spirit came to the window, and said that his name was James Harris, and that he had come to take her away as his wife. She explains that she is married, and would not have her husband know of this visit for five hundred pounds. James Harris, however, said he had seven ships upon the sea; and when she heard these 'fair tales,' she succumbed, went away with him, and 'was never seen no more.' The ship-carpenter on his return hanged himself.

Scott's ballad in the Minstrelsy spoils its own effect by converting the spirit into the devil. An American version of 1858 tells the tale of a 'house-carpenter' and his wife, and alters 'the banks of Italy' to 'the banks of old Tennessee.'


THE DÆMON LOVER

    1.
    'O whare hae ye been, my dearest dear,
        These seven lang years and more?'
    'O I am come to seek my former vows,
        That ye promis'd me before.'

    2.
    'Awa wi' your former vows,' she says,
        'Or else ye will breed strife;
    Awa wi' your former vows,' she says,
        'For I'm become a wife.

    3.
    'I am married to a ship-carpenter,
        A ship-carpenter he's bound;
    I wadna he ken'd my mind this nicht
        For twice five hundred pound'

        ***    ***    ***

    4.
    She has put her foot on gude ship-board,
        And on ship-board she's gane,
    And the veil that hung oure her face
        Was a' wi' gowd begane.

    5.
    She had na sailed a league, a league,
        A league but barely twa,
    Till she did mind on the husband she left,
        And her wee young son alsua.

    6.
    'O haud your tongue, my dearest dear,
        Let all your follies abee;
    I'll show whare the white lillies grow,
        On the banks of Italie.'

    7.
    She had na sailed a league, a league,
        A league but barely three,
    Till grim, grim grew his countenance,
        And gurly grew the sea.

    8.
    'O haud your tongue, my dearest dear,
        Let all your follies abee;
    I'll show whare the white lillies grow,
        In the bottom of the sea.'

    9.
    He's tane her by the milk-white hand,
        And he's thrown her in the main;
    And full five-and-twenty hundred ships
        Perish'd all on the coast of Spain.