The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Complete‪)‬

A Little Russian story of Solomon and his wife is given by Dragomanof, Popular Traditions and Tales, 1876, p. 103, translated in Revue des Traditions Populaires, II, 518, by E. Hins. Solomon takes a wife from the family of a heathen tsar. She hates him, and concerts an elopement with a heathen tsarevitch. She pretends to be dead. Solomon burns her hands through and through with a red-hot iron. She utters no sound, is buried in the evening, and immediately disinterred and carried off by her paramour. Solomon goes to the tsarevitch’s house, attended by three armies, a black, a white, and a red (which are, of course, kept out of sight), and furnished with three pipes. The tsarevitch has a gallows set up, and Solomon is taken out to be hanged. He obtains liberty first to play on his pipes. The sound of the first brings the white army, that of the second the red, that of the third the black. The tsarevitch is hanged, the tsaritsa dragged at a horse’s tail.

A like story is narrated in German in a passage of about two hundred and fifty verses, which is appended to the Wit-Combat, or Dialogue, of Solomon and Morolf; and again, with much interpolation and repetition, in a later strophic poem of more than four thousand lines. Both pieces are extant in manuscripts and print of the fifteenth century, but their original is considerably earlier.

In the briefer and earlier of the two German versions, Solomon’s wife has bestowed her love on a nameless heathen king, and wishes to escape to him, but cannot bring this about. She feigns to be sick, and the heathen (with whom she has been in correspondence) sends two minstrels to her, who pretend to be able to cure sick folk with their music. They obtain admission to the queen, give her an herb which throws her into a death-like sleep, and carry her off to their master. Morolf, at King Solomon’s entreaty, sets forth to find the queen, and, after traversing many strange lands, succeeds. Solomon, under his guidance and advice, and properly supported by an armed force, goes to the castle where the queen is living; leaves his men in an adjoining wood, under command to come to him when they hear his horn blow; and, disguised as a pilgrim, begs food at the castle. His wife knows him the moment she lays eyes on him, and tells the heathen that it is Solomon. The heathen, overjoyed, says to Solomon, If I were in your hands, what should be my death? Would God it were so! answers the king. I would take you to the biggest wood, let you choose your tree, and hang you. So shall it be, says the heathen, calls his people, takes Solomon to the wood, and bids him choose his tree. I shall not be long about that, says Solomon; but, seeing that I am of kingly strain, grant me, as a boon, to blow my horn three times. The queen objects; the heathen says, Blow away. At the third blast Morolf arrives with Solomon’s men. The heathen and all his people are slain; the queen is taken back to Jewry, and put to death by opening her veins in a bath.