Which epic poem was "Ave Maria" loosely based on, which is used by Wilfred Jackson in Walt Disney's "Fantasia"?
Wilfred Jackson Wilfred Jackson (Chicago, Illinois, January 24, 1906 – Newport Beach, California, August 7, 1988) was an American animator, arranger, composer and director best known for his work on the "Mickey Mouse" and "Silly Symphonies" series of cartoons and the two segments "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria" of "Fantasia" from Walt Disney Productions. He was also instrumental in developing the system with which Disney added music and sound to Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. Several of the Silly Symphony shorts he directed, including "The Old Mill" (1937), won Academy Awards during the 1930s. Starting with "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937 he directed sequences in many of the major Disney animated features up to "Lady and the Tramp" in 1955, including all of the animated sequences in "Song of the South" (1946). He later moved into television, producing and directing for Disney's Disneyland series. After continuing health issues he retired in 1961. Wilfred Jackson died at age 82 in 1988.
Childe Rowland "Childe Rowland" is a fairy tale, the most popular version written by Joseph Jacobs in his "English Fairy Tales", published in 1890. It was based on a Scottish ballad, which is why the text alternates between prose and rhyming stanzas. Joseph Jacobs called the King of Elfland's palace "the Dark Tower" in his version, an addition he made that was not part of the original ballad. This harks to Shakespeare's "King Lear" and Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," but neither of those references have any relation to the fairy tale.