Gil Brenton
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Gil Brenton is Child ballad 5 existing in several variants.
[edit] Synopsis
The hero, of various name in different variants, marries a woman, who is warned that if she is not a maiden, she had best send someone else in her place to the bed. She sends her maid in her place. The morning after the wedding, he asks the blankets and sheets on the bed, or the household spirit Billie Blin, if he married a maiden, and they answer that the woman he married was not, and furthermore, she's pregnant. He laments this to his mother, who goes to tax his bride with it.
She asks who the father of the baby is. The bride (usually the youngest of three or seven) tells how she had gone to the greenwood and been kept there until evening by a man, who had left her with a lock of hair, some black beads, a golden ring, and a pen-knife (or other tokens in other variants). The mother demands them and takes them with her to her son, where she demands what he had done with the tokens that she had given him. He tells her that he gave them to a lady, and he would give anything to have that lady as his wife. She assures him that he had.
When the baby is born, there is writing on his body declaring that he is the son of the hero. The hero may show his pleasure by the number of kisses, or by having the heroine dressed in silk and the baby bathed in milk.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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