Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/451

Rh NOTES. 347 5. * You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips; But my breath smells earthy strong ; If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips, Your time will not be long. 6. ' 'Tis down in yonder garden green, Love, where we used to walk, The finest flower that ere was seen Is withered to a stalk. 7. * The stalk is withered dry, my love, So will our hearts decay ; So make yourself content, m^ love, Till God calls you away.' See Sweet William's Ghost for st. 5 of the above. 4 2. fashes. MS. fishes. Lockhart suggested the reading fashes = troubles, disturbance, storms. 5 1. B puts the time as * the hallow days of Yule.' — Martinmas = 11 November. S 4. * The notion that the souls of the blessed wear garlands, seems to be of Jewish origin.' — Scott. 9 1, 2. Cf. Child, Ballads J III, 229, st. 14. — Extravagant and erring spirits are usually supposed to oe warned by any cockcrow which they may hear; but R. Kohler, Germania, XI, 85 ff., shows more elaborate distinctions in folk-lore. Three, sometimes (as in this ballad) two cocks, distinguished by color, — white, red and black, — announce to ghosts and demons the approach of day ; and it is when the third (or second : in each case, the last) cock crows that the spirits vanish. Kohler notes that in our ballad the gray cock takes the place of the black. In Scandinavian myth, the dark- red cock crows in the under-world ; but every one knows how devil and demons have been substituted for perfectly harmless spirits. H^re, at any rate, no evil is at work ; the sons simply obey the ghostly signal of recall. 12 3, 4. The beauty of reticence in this last farewell is as delicate as anything in literature. CLERK COLVEN. Child, II, 371 ff. — See his full account of similar European ballads. Clerk Saunders, 10 4, Child, III, 1 59. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Clerk ' is what Allingham calls * a learned young knight ' ; see