Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/452

348 348 NOTES, 1 1." This 'gay ladie ' is his newly married wife ; hence the ven- geance of the forsaken mermaid, — not forsaken, however, as the sequel shows, but sufficiently slighted. 1 3. * About her slender waist.* 3 2. 'Be not so anxious abouc me.* 5 2. And ay's ye wash = * And it is ever that you wash,* * You are always washing your sark o' silk.' 6 2. See Tarn Litiy 7. Scott remarks, in a note to the latter ballad, that ' the ladies are always represented, in Dunbar*s Poems, with green mantles and yellow hair.* FAIR MARGARET AND* SWEET WILLIAM. Printed in the Reliques, and an early favorite with the stalls ; Child, III, 199 £[.; and quoted, from whatever source, in Beaumont and Fletcher*s Knight of the Burning Pestle^ ii, 8, and iii, 5. The final stanza is here omitted, — a mere tag. For the tune, see Chappell, I, 182 f. 1. See Lord Thomas and Fair Annet. 17-19. See note to 29, 30, of same ballad. SWEET WILLIAM*S GHOST. In Herd*s MSS. this ballad is the continuation of Clerk Saunders, and is so treated by Scott in the Minstrelsy ; see Child, III, 226 ff. — It would be too large a task to point out nearer or remote parallels in literature ; but a good measure of difference between poetry of the schools and poetry of the people may be gained by comparing this ballad with either Wordsworth*s Laodamia or Goethe's Braut von Corinth. l. A wat = *l wot,* like *in sooth.* 2. * Are ye at present sleeping or waking ? * 3. She does not yet know that he is dead. 4. See The Unquiet Grave^ 5, above, p. 347. 5 1. Professor Kittredge very plausibly suggests that this unintel- ligible mid-larf is really the corrupted name of some town. Thus Usher'' s Well, B, 4 (Child, III, 239), says of a similar situation : Digitized by LjOOQIC