This is in fact an example of a genre not uncommon in early film,a photoplay based on a sentimental narrative poem. D. W. Griffith was particularly fond of the genre (examples include Enoch Arden,Pippa Passes, The Unchanging Sea. Scandinavian film-makers also liked the genre and Victor Sjöström's (his 1917 Terje Vigen is based on a poem by Ibsen). The genre would persist even after the feature film became common in films such as The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921) and the superb Australian film, The Sentimental Bloke (1919), which is perhaps the finest example of the genre.
Unfortunately this is not clear from the EYE institute version, where the verse is replaced by lengthy prose intertitles but there is another version available on the internet (from the Huntley Archives). It is no better quality and, as with all the Huntley Archive films, there is no real attempt to identify the film (their films 17773 as "A High-born Child" 1910s) but it does include some of the verse and makes the nature of the film clear.
It is conceivable that the poem was specially written for the film (as in the 1919 Swedish comedy short Åh, i moron kväll) but it is much more probable that it is based on a well-known poem but I have not been able to identify the source.
Unfortunately this is not clear from the EYE institute version, where the verse is replaced by lengthy prose intertitles but there is another version available on the internet (from the Huntley Archives). It is no better quality and, as with all the Huntley Archive films, there is no real attempt to identify the film (their films 17773 as "A High-born Child" 1910s) but it does include some of the verse and makes the nature of the film clear.
It is conceivable that the poem was specially written for the film (as in the 1919 Swedish comedy short Åh, i moron kväll) but it is much more probable that it is based on a well-known poem but I have not been able to identify the source.
