Basic Poetics - Ballads - (The Wee Wee Man)

           ["The Wee Wee Man - Vernon Hill -  detail from illustrations to Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912)]  

AG: Then there's another one that had a very… a ballad called "The Wee Wee Man", that had very pretty fairy imagery. You know, like, as you will find in Helen Adam's later ballads, there's that..like as  "the bridge of golden beams" (sic). There is.. Well there is some combination of humor and delicacy, just like in Shakespeare.

A little dwarf, a "wee wee man", stops a Lady and takes her to her castle -  "On we left, and on we rode/Till we came to yon bonny hall/ The roof was of the beaten gold/Of gleaming crystal was the wall/When we came to the door of gold/The pipes within did whistle and play/But 'ere the tune of it was told/My wee wee man was clean away" - 

That's really amazing - The roof was of the beaten gold /Of gleaming crystal was the wall/When we came to the door of gold/ The pipes within did whistle and play" - A funny syncopation,but also a funny eerie music conjored up - "The pipers within did whistle and play' - So that's "The Wee Wee Man"

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-nine-and-a-half-minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-and-a-half minutes in]