(no subject)

So a while ago, looking for Steeleye Span songs I hadn't heard, I ran into "The Two Magicians." It's basically a take on an English or Scottish folksong about a "blacksmith" pursuing a maiden, there are several variants apparently and all of them involve the blacksmith changing forms into something which matches the maiden's change in form. I've seen this trope before; Ceridwen pursuing Taleisin, Heimdallr pursuing Loki.

The whole thing reads as overtly pagan. One of those British things where a distinctly non-Christian thing got preserved without much context by generations of rural people dead certain they were C of E and nothing else. I have to wonder who the magicians were, originally.