Who wrote a song based on a character from English folklore in the Victorian era?
Spring-heeled Jack Spring-heeled Jack is an entity in English folklore of the Victorian era. The first claimed sighting of Spring-heeled Jack was in 1837. Later sightings were reported all over Great Britain and were especially prevalent in suburban London, the Midlands and Scotland.
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.