'The Elf-Stroke' in France and Italy: An aoutrou Nann / Le roi Renaud / Re Gilardin
Illustration: La fée et le chevalier (The Fairy and the Knight), 1912, by Paul Serusier
This narrative, of medieval origins, is very widespread in Europe [For some discussion see Terre Celtiche and Antiwar Songs]. In simplest outline, the story is that a nobleman is in the wilderness and meets a supernatural woman who attempts to get him to go to bed with her. He declines, and she strikes him with a mortal illness. He returns home to his house and asks his mother to conceal his death from his wife. Her attempts at untruth being unsuccessful, his wife dies in turn.
This narrative is commonly known as Elveskud or Herr Olof in Scandinavia [See Wikipedia]; the first published Breton version was titled An Aotrou Nann hag ar Gorrigan. It frequently splits into two ballads, the supernatural encounter related in the ballad which Francis Child called Clerk Colville, and the wife's mourning in the French Le roi Renaud and the closely related Piedmontese Re Gilardin.
1946: Performed in concert along with les Compagnons de la Chanson.
1977: Pierre Bensusan sings and provides an innovative guitar accompaniment.
1980: This version, with its guitar accompaniment by Martin Simpson, was inspired by Pierre Bensusan's.
1982: Recorded by a well-known Piedmontese folk group.
1999: An arrangement by Monique Jutras and Jean-Claude Bélanger of a Canadian version published in Marius Barbeau's 1962 book Le rossignol y chante.
2000: A version of 'Le roi Renaud' from Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany, from the repertoire of Mélanie Houëdry.
2001: Vincent Dumestre and his ensemble Le Poème harmonique reconstruct a 15th-century style.
2024: A bardcore Latin adaptation of Re Gilardin.
