Page:The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 01.djvu/203



three stanzas of this ballad which are found in the Musical Museum (C) were furnished, it is said, by Burns. It was first printed in full (A b) in Motherwell's Minstrelsy. Motherwell retouched a verse here and there slightly, to regulate the metre. A a is here given as it stands in his manuscript. B consists of some scattered verses as remembered by Sir W. Scott.

The directions in 3, 4 receive light from a passage in 'Robin Hood's Death and Burial:'

Other ballads with a like theme are 'The Bonny Hind,' further on in this volume, and the two which follow it.

Translated in Grundtvig's E. og s. Folkeviser, No 49, p. 308; Wolff's Halle der Volker,, 64.