Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/106

 CORRESPONDENCE.

"The Bitter Withy" Ballad. (Vol. xix., p. 190.)

In connection with this ballad a correspondent in Vancouver wrote to me that he remembered a child's sing-song in Edin- burgh about "Jolly Jorden." It will be remembered that in "The Bitter Withy" "three jolly jordans " are drowned in following our Lord over a bridge built of the beams of the sun. Hoping to find an Edinburgh version of "The Bitter Withy," I asked in a letter to the Scotsman for information. I received the rhymes which follow {Scotsman, December 17 and

19, 1908):

Edinburgh, December 15, 1908.

Sir, — As a child I have often joined in singing a rhyme which is probably what Mr. Andrew Lang refers to as " The Jolly Jordens." The words were : "Johnnie Johnston's ta'en a notion For to go and sail the sea ; He has left his own true lover Weeping by the greenwood tree." This was in Edinburgh sixty years since. — I am, etc.,

"AuLD Lang Syne."

P.S. — The same words, to the same old tune, are still sung by children.

A. L. S.

Edinburgh, December 15, 1908.

Sir, — The children still sing on the street a rhyme as follows :

"Johnnie Johnston's ta'en a notion

For to sail across the sea;

lie has left his own true lover

Weepin' 'neath the greenwood tree.