Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/457

Rh NOTES. 353 5 12. A * whang * is a thong ; he has thus a full * sheaf.* 10 11, 12. Note the 'run-on' verse, a rare occurr||ice in ballad metre. 11 2. gare often = a strip of cloth, a part of the dress : 'used vaguely in romances,' says Professor Child {Balladsy first collection, II, 397), 'for clothing.* Jamieson : *A triangular piece of cloth inserted at the bottom of a shift or robe.* Cf. gore. LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNEX. Printed in the Reliques 'from a MS. copy transmitted from Scotland * ; an English version was printed as broadside in the reign of Charles II. ' One of the most beautiful of our ballads, and indeed of all ballads,* says Professor Child, Ballads, III, i8o. 4 3. nut-browne is here the opposite of fair or beautiful, though we can hardly assume the same insinuation for that type of constancy and amiability, the Nut-brown Maid. In C (Child, p. i86) the fair one grows scurrilous, addressing Lord Thomas : ' Brown, brown is your steed,' she says, ' But browner is your bride ; But gallant is that handkerchy, That hideth her din hide.' The bnmette was certainly undesired in Germanic Europe : see Twa Sisters, 14, with the line of another version: 'ye was fair and I was din [=dun]*; and an army of similar expressions could be marshalled, including Shakspere*s famous apologies for his *dark lady.* 8 2. ♦ And her cattle in the stable.* 11 2. owt ^a«^ = immediately. 15 3. The finest linen was made in Holland, and so named. 16 4. See note to Young Waters, 3 3. 29-30. This well-known substitute in tragic ballads for the * lived happily ever after* of ordinary tales is fully treated by Professor Child, Ballads, I, 96-99. See also Talvj, Charakteristik, i39f. The former notes that in English ballads the plants, separated at the roots, but twining their branches lovingly together, are * either a brier and a rose, or a brier and a birk.* — See Fair Margaret and Sweet William, Fair Janet, and the familiar ballad of Lord Level. Digitized by LjOOQIC