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''[[Thomas the Rhymer]]'' is a Scottish ballad, derived from the [[Chivalric Romance]] ''Thomas of Ercildoune''. It concerns the deeds of Thomas the Rhymer, or "True Thomas", a young Scottish nobleman who, while lying under a tree on a hillside, sees a beautiful woman approach him on horseback. Thomas is so stricken by her beauty that he believes her to be the Virgin Mary, but she rebukes him, telling him that she's actually the Queen of Elfland, and that he must come with her, to be her servant for seven years. She gifts him a green cloak, and a green pair of velvet shoes, and he rides off with her to Elfland, not to be seen again for seven years.
The ballad exists in ten different variants, one of which was collected by [[Walter Scott]] in his ''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'', and three of which were collected by Frances James Child in his [[The English and Scottish Popular Ballads | Child Ballads]]. The figure of True Thomas is loosely based on a real person, Thomas of Ercildoune, a Scottish lord who lived during the 1200's, and who is widely speculated to be the author of the ''Prose Tristan'', one of the more famous versions of the Tristan legend.
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