O Waken, Waken, Burd Isbel details
![[image]](http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Rackham-SomeBritishBallads/pages/012-O-Waken,-Waken,-Burd-Isbel/012-O-Waken,-Waken,-Burd-Isbel-q75-584x723.jpg "[image]")
Notes:
“O it fell once upon a day
Burd Isbel fell asleep,
An’ up it starts the Billy Blind,
An’ stood at her bed-feet.
‘O waken, waken, Burd Isbel,
How can you sleep so soun’, Whan this is Bekie’s wedding day
An’ the marriage gain on?” (p. 12)
An imp or gnome or pixie dressed in red stands on a chair at the foot of the lady’s four-poster full-tester bed. His bare feet have long bird-like talons. The lady is in her night-clothes, sitting up and staring at him.
He is telling her to go to the wedding of her lover, young Bekie, so that he will marry her.
