Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/459

Rh NOT^S. 355 for the roughness — not coarseness — of the details, we shall be ready to concede that no better ballad can be found in any tongue. An obvious comparison brings us to the same obstacles and the same triumph in judging Chaucer's Gierke's Tale^ as well as to that admirable * dramatic lyric,' The Nut-brown Maid. The editor has taken a surely pardonable liberty in omitting the one passage which jars hopelessly with our modern sentiment, — stanzas 27, 28, 29 as printed by Professor Child. Hence A, 30 is 27 of this copy. 3 .3. strayght = narrow. 28 1. MS. ' This, and itt drove now afterward.' Professor Child inserts 'night,' but says it is an emendation * made without confidence,' and assuming and to be superfluous, as in Sir Cawline: see notes. Ballads^ III, 99, 57 (on and). 33 4. monand= moaning. 34 3, 4. To wish one's child bom and one's self in the grave is common with forsaken sweethearts in popular lyric (cf. the song JVafyf Waly); but this touch is final. Mr. Furnivall pours out his wrath on the Child's cursedness and brutality (FoliOy II, 278); but he goes too far. Child Waters is abominably callous, but he has heart enough to respond to this last and unconscious appeal. More- over, the response is no sentiment, but practical amends. FAIR ANNIE. Printed by Scott in the Minstrelsy; Child, III, 63 ff. The same story is told by Marie de France in the Lai del Freisne, * three hun- dred years older than any manuscript of the ballad,' though not the source of the latter. Scott was moved by the resemblance, or iden- tity, of the stories to remark *that the romantic ballads of later times are, for the most part, abridgments of the ancient metrical romances, narrated in a smoother stanza and more modern lan- guage.' 1 2. your lane = alone. Cf. Fair Mary, 9 4. 4 4. Married women wore their hair bound up, or under a cap; maidens * wore it loose or in a braid.' See Child, III, 64, note. 22 2. lilly lee = lilied or flowery meadow. 22 3. grew means a greyhound. Digitized by LjOOQIC