Matt Roth [to JM: I found another version about Lord Randall's true love. It comes close to another, related to a treacherous Elf Knight (totally unrelated to Goethe's and Shade's Erlkonig lines).] I was interested in the “Elf Knight,” too, since in her essay Pound mentions it directly after her discourse regarding “Johnny Randall.”

JM: If you go to Medieval English Ballads www.moonwise.com/ballads.html - or click on the entry "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight," you'll find a different version from the one you got from Pound's essay. The "Lord Randall" story sounded familiar, but I couldn't find the key-words to check it in any VN-List posting, nor anywhere else I'd been roaming over the past years.

I was reminded of a recent insertion in Zembla, namely, Didier Machu's erudite sensuous Apollo and Dionysus in Lolita when the author set together Proust's French and Nabokov's English sentences.that evolve around the sun, freckled and wan-faced girls. D.Machu ellaborates on the Apollonian/Dionysiac mythological dimension he spotted in Lolita and he follows close to Nabokov's steps and, as it seems to me, these are rather different from Nietzsche's or Heidegger's contrasts between Apollo/reason and Dynonysus/overflowing sensation. The theme of "rebirth"is associated to RLSK and the name Sebastian might refer to the myth related Portuguese King Sebastião (one of the options offrered by Page Stegner, probably in "Escape into Aesthetics"?) . .

"Cock Robin... is believed by some scholars to be derived from the early Norse myth about the death of Balder, god of summer sunlight and the incarnation of the life principle, who was slain by Hoder at Loki's instigation. (See Q & A #8 re Loki.) The evidence of word usage, ie. shouell would indicate a fourteenth century origin for the verse. There are als1676-1745), whose ministry was known as the Robinocracy. It's first appearance in a nursery book coincided with this time period--the first four verses were in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song of sixteenth century references to similar tales. Then, the ballad evidently had renewed life as an allegory of the intrigues around the 1742 downfall of Sir Robert Walpole, First Earl of Oxford (Book in c1744--after c1770 the entire verse was a favorite, being printed in numerous editions as chapbooks and toy books, and being included in collections."

Wikipedia: Baldr (also Balder, Baldur) is a god in Norse mythology. In the 12th century, Danish accounts by Saxo Grammaticus and other Danish Latin chroniclers recorded a euhemerized account of his story. Compiled in Iceland in the 13th century, but based on much older Old Norse poetry, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda contain numerous references to the death of Baldr as both a great tragedy to the Æsir and a harbinger of Ragnarök... Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology (chapter 11) identifies Old Norse Baldr with the Old High German given name Paltar, and with Old English bealdor, baldor "lord, prince, king" (used always with a genitive plural, as in gumena baldor "lord of men", wigena baldor "lord of warriors", etc.) Old Norse shows this usage of the word as a honorific in a few cases, as in baldur î brynju (Sæm. 272b) and herbaldr (Sæm. 218b), both epithets of heroes in general....

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* -RLSK: "He [SK’s publisher] even seems to approve of the title Cock Robin Hits Back, though Clare doesn't.” / 'I think it sounds silly,' said Clare, 'and besides, a bird can't hit.’/‘It alludes to a well-known nursery-rhyme,’ said Sebastian, for my benefit.” (p.72)