"The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter" is an English ballad, collected by Francis James Child as Child Ballad 110.[1]
Contents |
A knight persuades a shepherd's daughter to give him her virginity. She chases after him to court, on foot while he is on horseback, and demands marriage. He attempts to bribe her, but she insists, and he must marry her or be executed. After the marriage, it is revealed, either by the woman herself or by Billy Blin, that she is, in fact, the daughter of royalty or high nobility; it may also be revealed that the man is a noble instead of a mere knight.
Her pursuit of the knight, on foot while he is on horseback, also appears in Child Ballad 63, "Child Waters", where it fits a very different plot.[2] The motif is very similar to that of the loathly lady, particularly the variant found in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".[3]
Lise et Mainfroi, a 1740 French imitation of this ballad, has an actual shepherdess as the heroine; she announces at the altar that she is satisfied without the wedding, and the king and his court must persuade her to agree.[4]