Lady Diamond

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Lady Diamond is Child ballad 269, existing in several variants.[1]

[edit] Synopsis

A great king had a daughter (Lady Diamond, Daisy, Dysmal, or Dysie), who fell in love with his kitchen boy. She became pregnant. Her father demands to know the father, and she tells him. He has the kitchen boy secretly murdered, but then, in most variants, brings his heart to his daughter. She dies. In most variants, the king laments the deaths.

[edit] Variants

The story is derived from that of Ghismonda and Guiscardo from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Francis James Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, "Lady Diamond"
  2. ^ Helen Child Sargent, ed; George Lymn Kittredge, ed English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Cambridge Edition p 583 Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 1904
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