P. 22. Translated after the original text by Professor Emilio Teza: ‘I tre Banditi,’ Padova, 1894.
26, 871. I regret having changed ‘an oute-horne,’ which is the reading in all the texts which have the stanza (b-f), to ‘a noute-home.’ Oute horne was originally given, and therefore this reading was not entered in the variations of c-f, as should have been done later, when the reading ‘a noute-home’ was adopted.
P. 43, note §. Right-hitting Brand is one of the attendants of Robin in A. Munday’s Metropolis Coronata (1615), Fairholt, Pageants, I, 40. J. M. Manly.
52 and note. See further on Le prêt miraculeusement remboursé, M. René Basset, in Revue des Traditions populaires, IX, 14-31.
54. Mr Macmath has sent me a transcript of another copy of the song in Deuteromelia which exhibits some variations. It was found April 5, 1895, in a bundle of papers that had belonged to John, Duke of Roxburghe. This copy is in a 17th century hand, and at the end is written: “This song was esteemed an old song before the rebellion broke out in 1641.”
76, st. 412. The first two verses should be corrected according to f, g, thus:
P. 103, note *, V, 240. Communion-bread called God (Lord). “For it was about Easter, at what times maidens gadded abroade, after they had taken their Maker, as they call it.” Wilson, Arte of Logike, fol. 84 b. J. M. Manly.
“In oure louerd þat he had ynome wel ioyful he was þo.” St Edmund the Confessor, v. 573, Furnivall, Early English Poems, Philol. Soc., p. 86. “Preostes ... fette to þis holi maide godes flesch and his blod.” St Lucy, v. 168, ib. p. 106. G. L. K.
103, note †. The met-yard, being a necessary part of an archer’s equipment for such occasions as p. 29, 148, 158; p. 75, 397; p. 93, 28; p. 201, 18, 21, may well enough be buried with him.
104. Russian. Similar directions as to the grave in Jakuškin, p. 99.
P. 128 a, v. 80. The reading should be
otherwise there is no change in their relative plight.
P. 133 a. There is a black-letter copy, printed by and for W. Onley, in Lord Crawford’s collection, No 1320; the date put at 1680-85. A white-letter copy in Roxburghe, III, 728. See Ebsworth’s Roxburghe Ballads, VIII, 504.
[241 a. The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich have been edited by Drs Jessopp and James.]
P. 258 b, 3d paragraph. The Danish ballad is printed in Dania, II, 275, 1893: ‘Vise om Caroline Mathilde,’ derived from an old lady who in childhood had heard it sung by a peasant girl, about 50 years before the publication.
P. 283 a. Knights wearing the king’s armor in battle. This was naturally frequently done. So John at Poitiers had twenty in his “parements,” Froissart (Buchon), III, 186, and Charles VIII a good number at Fornovo, Daniel, Histoire de France, VIII, 222.
Pp. 294, 520 a, IV, 499, V, 244 b. St George Our Lady’s Knight. Add: Torrent of Portyngale, v. 1677: E. Flügel, Neuenglisches Lesebuch, I, 441.
P. 306 a, 38 f. Motherwell has cited an apt passage from the romance of Alisaunder which may well be repeated.
P. 306, st. 54, IV, 502, V, 244. Hrafn fights after Gunnlaugr has hewn off his feet: Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu, ed. Mogk, p. 27. W. H. Schofield.
Note †. The Highlander is paralleled by an Indian in The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Markham, The Hawkins’ Voyages, Hakluyt Society, p. 243, and by Mordred in Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. Sommer, Bk 21, ch. 4. G. L. K.
P. 351 b (12, lapt all in leather), IV, 507 a. The dying witch of Berkeley says to her children: Insuite me corio cervino, deinde in sarcophago lapideo supinate, operculum plumbo et ferro constringite. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, Bk 2, I, 254, § 204.
[P. 367. Johnie’s plain speech to the king. So in Li Charrois de Nymes, v. 283, in Jonkbloet, Guillaume d’Orange, I, 80: “Et dit Guillaumes, ‘Dans rois, vos i mentez.’”]
367, and note. The Baron of Brackley’s son (No 203), set on the nurse’s knee, uses nearly the same words as Johnie Armstrong’s in B, 24. M. Gaidoz, Mélusine, VII, 70, cites from Hone the passage in No 54 (B, 5, 6, see also A, 5, 6, D, 4, 5), in which Jesus speaks from his mother’s womb. See further Mélusine, IV, 447, V, 36, 257, VI, 92.
P. 372-6. Appendix. ‘The Duke of Bedford,’ Longman’s Magazine, XVII, 217, 1890, “sent from Suffolk,” is one half (sts 5-8) a plagiarism from ‘The Death of Queen Jane.’ Compare A, 5, 6, B, 8, C, 5, 6, D 6 of Queen Jane with what follows. The remainder of ‘The Duke of Bedford’ is so trivial that it is not worth the while at present to assign that piece its own place. I have not attempted to identify this duke of Bedford; any other duke would probably answer as well.
P. 382. The passages following relate to the affair of the Frenchwoman and the apothecary. Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1563. (Indicated to me by Mr Andrew Lang.)
The Queen’s apothecary got one of her maidens, a Frenchwoman, with child. Thinking to have covered his fault with medicine, the child was slain. They are both in prison, and she is so much offended that it is thought they shall both die. Randolph to Cecil, Edinburgh, 21 Dec., 1563, p. 637. The apothecary and the woman he got with child were both hanged this Friday. Randolph to Cecil, Dec. 31, 1563, p. 650.
The heroine of this ballad is Mary Hamilton in all copies in which she has a full name, that is, twelve out of the twenty-four which have any name; Mary simply, or Mary mild,[127] is found in eleven copies, and Maisry in one. Finding in the history of the court of Peter the Great an exact counterpart of the story of the ballad with a maid of honor named Mary Hamilton filling the tragic rôle, and “no trace of an admixture of the Russian story with that of the Frenchwoman and the queen’s apothecary,” I felt compelled to admit that Sharpe’s suggestion of the Russian origin of the ballad was, however surprising, the only tenable opinion (III, 382 f.). Somewhat later a version of the ballad (U) was found at Abbotsford in which there is mention of the apothecary and of the practices for which he suffered in 1568, and this fact furnished ground for reopening the question (which, nevertheless, was deferred).
Mr Andrew Lang has recently subjected the matter of the origin of the ballad to a searching review (in Blackwood’s Magazine, September, 1895, p. 381 ff.). Against the improbability that an historical event of 1718-9 should by simple chance coincide, very minutely and even to the inclusion of the name of the principal actor, with what is related in a ballad ostensibly recounting an event in the reign of Mary Stuart, he sets the improbability that a ballad, older and superior in style to anything which we can show to have been produced in the 18th, or even the 17th century,[128] should have been composed after 1719, a ballad in which a contemporary occurrence in a foreign and remote country would be transferred to Scotland and Queen Mary’s day, and so treated as to fit perfectly into the circumstances of the time: and this while the ballad might entirely well have been evolved from a notorious domestic occurrence of the date 1563, the adventure of Queen Mary’s French maid and the apothecary—which has now turned out to be introduced into one version of the ballad.[129]
I wish to avow that the latter improbability, as put by Mr Lang, has come to seem to me considerably greater than the former.
The coincidence of the name of the heroine is indeed at first staggering; but it will be granted that of all the “honorable houses” no one might more plausibly supply a forgotten maid of honor than the house of Hamilton. The Christian name is a matter of course for a Queen’s Mary.
384 ff., IV, 507 ff., V, 246 f.
Communicated by Mr Andrew Lang as received from Mrs Arthur Smith; sung by a nurse. 4 is clearly modern.
176. Northumberland betrayed by Douglas.
P. 411 a. Looking through a ring. “The Dul Dauna put a ring to his eye, and he saw his grandfather on the deck walking.” Larminie, West Irish Folk-Tales, p. 9. G. L. K.
P. 417. Dr W. H. Schofield suggests that the romance imitated in the second part of this ballad is, Libeaus Desconus. There the hero, who is but a child in years (in the ballad he has a child’s voice), comes to a fair city by a river side, the lady of which is besieged by a giant, black as pitch. Libeaus undertakes to fight the giant, and is received by him with disdainful language. The fight is “beside the water brim.” They break their spears at the first encounter; then fight on foot with swords. Libeaus strikes off the giant’s head and carries it into the town; the people come out to meet him “with a fair procession,” and the lady invites him to be her lord in city and castle. Compare the ballad, etc., 54-78, and Libeaus Desconus, v. 1321 ff. [See Dr Schofield’s Studies on the Libeaus Desconus, p. 242, in Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature published under the direction of the Modern Language Departments of Harvard University, Vol. IV.]
IV, 513 b, H 24. Mr Macmath is convinced that the missing (illegible) word is orghie (orgeis=a fish, a large kind of ling).
P. 456. Buchan’s original MS. p. 216 ff., ‘The Laird o Logie.’
P. 5 a first paragraph. However, “in the list of Border thieves made in the year 1552, William Patrick, the priest, and John Nelson, the curate of Bewcastle, are both included”: Denham Tracts, I, 150. This shows that the society was homogeneous.
P. 14, E. Between 12 and 13 follows in Buchan’s original MS.:
P. 21. E has in Buchan’s original MS. this refrain at the end of the verse:
P. 41, note ‡. Read: The peerage of Aboyne was first created in 1626, in favor of John Gordon, fifth son of the first Marquis of Huntly (Viscount of Aboyne and Melgum in 1627). He married Sophia Hay, a daughter of Francis, Earl of Errol, The Records of Aboyne, edited by the Marquis of Huntly, New Spalding Club; 1894, pp. 325, 526.
V, 251 b, P. 44. In “But Rothiemay lie,” may seems to have been accidentally omitted. The “Turn” in Scott was probably meant for Twin, the dot of i being omitted.
P. 61 ff., V, 252. The three stanzas which follow are given in H. A. Kennedy’s “Professor Blackie: his Sayings and Doings, London, 1895” as they were sung by Marion Stodart, Professor Blackie’s aunt, to her sister’s children. P. 12 f. (Communicated by Mr David MacRitchie, of Edinburgh.)
“On the discovery of which the earl’ saddled to him his milk-white steed,’ and rested not till he had hanged the seven gypsies on a tree.”
O at the end of the second and the fourth verse of each stanza.
P. 186 f. In ‘Majčina kletva,’ Hrvatske Pjesme iz “Naše Sloge,” II, 22, No 18, two lovers go off in a boat, under a mother’s curse, and are both drowned.
P. 280 a, A, b. b was written down March 25, 1890.
P. 310. Mr Walker of Aberdeen suggests that Billy Beg in 3 should be Bellabeg, a small property in Strathdon. It will be observed that two other men in the same stanza are named by their estates.
P. 311 b, omit the paragraph beginning J, and say: Charles, first Earl of Aboyne, married for his first wife Margaret Irvine of Drum, who died in December, 1662. (The Records of Aboyne, edited by the Marquis of Huntly, New Spalding Club, 1894, p. 552.) The story of the ballad, so far as is known, is an absolute fiction.
In vol. ii of Retours or Services of Heirs, No 4906 (Aberdeen), 17 June, 1665, there is the entry: Domina Anna Gordoun, hæres Dominæ Margaretæ Irving, sponsæ Comitis de Aboyne matris. (Mr Walker of Aberdeen.)
311, V, 270. Mr Macmath has sent me this stall-copy, printed by J. Morren, Cowgate, Edinburgh.
42. set out out.
103. If he.
P. 338 b, 2d paragraph. As to the name Melville, Mr Walker of Aberdeen remarks: If Buchan’s story (given in his notes) of the Glenlogie incident were correct, the maiden’s name must have been Seaton, and not Melville, the Seatons and Urquharts being the only two names which in historical times could be called lairds of Meldrum or Bethelnie.
248. The Grey Cock, or, Saw you my Father?
P. 390. Add to the French ballads ‘Le voltigeur fidèle,’ Beauquier, Chansons p. recueillies en Franche-Comté, p. 338.
P. 393. ‘Andrew Bartin,’ communicated by Miss Louise Porter Haskell as derived from Gen. E. P. Alexander of South Carolina, and derived by him from the singing of a cadet at West Point Military Academy in the winter of 1856-7. Two or three slight corrections have been made by Mrs A. C. Haskell, sister of Gen. Alexander. This copy comes nearer than the others to the original Andrew Barton; but sts 11-13 are derived from Captain Ward, No 287, 8, 10.
21, etc. Bartyn. Gen. Alexander remarks that “the accent was on the last syllable.”
Fragment of a Suffolk Harvest Home song, remembered by an old Suffolk divine. Contributed by Edward Fitzgerald to Suffolk Notes and Queries in the ‘Ipswich Journal,’ 1877-78; where another stanza follows which has no connection with the above. See ‘Two Suffolk Friends,’ by Francis Hindes Groome, Edinburgh and London, 1895, p. 79 f.
[P. 29 a. Zupitza, Die mittelenglischen Bearbeitungen der Erzählung Boccaccio’s von Ghismonda u. Guiscardo, in Geiger’s Vierteljahrsschrift f. Kultur u. Litteratur der Renaissance, 1886, I, 63 ff.]
29. Italian. D. ‘Ricardo e Germonda,’ communicated by P. Mazzucchi, Castelguglielmo, July, 1894, to Rivista delle Tradizioni pop. italiane, I, 691.
[32 ff. On these stories of the husband who gives his wife her lover’s heart to eat, see H. Patzig, Zur Geschichte der Herzmäre, Berlin, 1891.]
34. A is translated by Professor Emilio Teza, ‘Donna Brigida,’ in Rassegna Napolitana, II, 63, 1895.
P. 60 ff. See Professor Schischmánov in Indogermanische Forschungen, IV, 412-48, 1894, Der Lenorenstoff in der bulgarischen Volkspoesie, Professor Schischmánov counts more than 140 versions of The Dead Brother, ballad and tale, in Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Roumanian, and Servian, 60 of these Bulgarian. Dozon 7 is affirmed to be a mere plagiarism. The versions of the Romaic ballad run up to 41. A very strong probability is made out of the derivation of all of the ballads of ‘The Dead Brother’ from the Greek.
62. Compare La Jeune Fille et l’âme de sa mère, Luzel, I, 60, 61 ff. A girl who grieves for her dead mother, and wishes to see her again, is directed by the curé to go three nights to the church, taking each time an apron for her mother. The mother tears the apron into 9, 6, 3 pieces successively.
64. A dead lover takes his mistress on his horse at midnight and carries her to the grave in which he is to be buried the following day. Her corpse is found there, flattened out and disfigured. ‘La fiancée du mort,’ Le Braz, La Légende de la mort en Basse-Bretagne, pp. 359-67.
[65 a. Romaic. Add: Georgeakis et Pineau, Le Folk-lore de Lesbos, p. 253 (in translation).]
P. 74 f. Similar tales: Sébillot, Contes pop. de la Haute-Bretagne, II, 149 f.; Luzel, Contes pop. de la Basse-Bretagne, I, 259.
P. 88 a. [A version similar to that in Smith’s Scotish Minstrel, but not absolutely identical, is mentioned in Blätter f. literarische Unterhaltung, 1855, p. 236, as contained, with a German translation, in “Ten Scottish Songs rendered into German. By W. B. Macdonald of Rammerscales. Scottish and German. Edinburgh, 1854.” Professor Child refers to this version in a MS. note. A specimen of the translation is given in the journal just cited, as well as enough of the Scotch to show that the copy is not exactly like Smith’s. “Vetter Macintosh” and “der Fürst Karl” are mentioned. Macdonald’s book is not at this moment accessible. G. L. K.]
89 f., 281 a. ‘Le Jaloux, ou Les Répliques de Marion;’ add version from Normandy (prose), Revue des Traditions populaires, X, 136; Hautes-Pyrénées, p. 515.
The copy in Le chroniqueur du Périgord et de Limousin is ‘La rusade,’ Poésies pop. de la France, MSS, III, fol. 84. The copy in Le Pèlerinage de Mireille (A. Lexandre), is from Provence, and closely resembles that in Daudet’s Numa Roumestan.
Italian. Add ‘Marion,’ Rivista delle Tradizioni pop. italiane, II, 34-37. ‘O Violina’ is repeated, very nearly, in a Tuscan Filastrocca, Rivista delle Tradizioni pop. italiane, II, 474 f.; see also Archivio, III, 43, No 18. A Polish ballad has some little similarity: Kolberg, Lud, XXI, 54, No 112.
P. 96 ff., 281. Add: ‘Le fumeur de hachich et sa femme,’ cited by R. Basset, Revue des Traditions Populaires, VII, 189. G. L. K. [Also ‘The First Fool’s Story,’ M. Longworth Dames, Balochi Tales, Folk-Lore, IV, 195.]
P. 104. From the recitation of Miss Lydia R. Nichols, Salem, Massachusetts, as heard in the early years of this century. Sung by a New England country fellow on ship-board: Journal of American Folk-Lore, VII, 253 ff., 1894.
As to “drew her table,” 13, the following information is given: “I have often heard a mother tell her daughter to ‘draw the table.’ Forty years ago it was not uncommon to see in farmhouses a large round table, the body of which was made to serve as an armchair. When the table was not in use the top was tipped back against the wall. Under the chair-seat was a drawer in which the table linen was kept. When meal-time came the table was drawn away from the wall, the top brought down on the arms of the chair, and the cloth, which had been fished out of the drawer, spread over it.”