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KING ESTMERE. From Eeligues of English Poetry, i. 65.
" This romantic legend," says Percy, " is given from two copies, one of them m the Editor's folio MS., but which contained very great variations." This second copy has been conjectured to be of Percy's own making, the ballad never having been heard of by any one else, out of his manuscript. Judging from the internal evidence, the alterations made in the printed text were not very serious.
King Easter and King Wester have appeared in the ballad of Fause Foodrage, (vol. iii. p. 40.) In another version of the same, they are called the, Eastmure king and the Westmure king, (Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. lix.) There is also a tale cited in the Complaynt of Scotland, (i. 98,) of a king of Estmureland that married the daughter of the king of Westmureland. This is plausibly supposed by Ritson to have been a romance of Horn, in which case the two countries should mean England and Ireland. King Esmer is one of King Diderik's champions (in the Danish ballad, Kong Dv-derik og hans Koemper), and the father of Svend Von-ved (in Svend Vonved). In the Flemish and German romances of The Knight of the Swan, Essmer, or Es-meres, is one of the seven sons of Oriant, and in Le Dit de Flourence de Homme (Jubinal, Nouveau Recueil de Conies, etc., i. 88), Esmerc is a Roman prince. (Grundtvig, i. 78, 236.) For the nonce, we are told |
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