The Text is from Lovely Jenny's Garland, as given with emendations by Professor Child. There is also a curiously perverted version in Herd's manuscript, in which the verses require rearrangement before becoming intelligible....
The Text is from Alexander Fraser Tytler's Brown MS., which was also the source of Scott's version in the Minstrelsy. One line (31.1), closely resembling a line in Lady Wardlaw's forged ballad Hardyknute, caused Sir Walter to i...
The Text is from Thomas Deloney's Pleasant History of John Winchcomb,[1] the eighth edition of which, in 1619, is the earliest known. 'In disgrace of the Soots,' says Deloney, 'and in remembrance of the famous atchieved histori...
The Text is from Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs (1769), which is almost identical with a copy in Johnson's Museum. Another variant, also given in the Museum, was contributed by Burns, who made it shorter and more dramati...
Ther herde I pleyen on an harpe That souned bothe wel and sharpe, Orpheus ful craftely, And on his syde, faste by, Sat the harper Orion, And Eacides Chiron, And other harpers many oon,...
The Text is from a copy taken down from North Devon tradition by the Rev. S. Baring Gould, and printed by Child; since when other versions have been found still in circulation in England. A Sussex version, though perhaps derive...
The Text of the ballad is here given from Kinloch's MSS., where it is in the handwriting of John Hill Burton when a youth. The text of the song Waly, waly, I take from Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany. The song and the ballad have...
The Text is from Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia (1609), the only text that has come down to us of a 'three-man's song' which achieved extraordinary popularity during' the seventeenth century.
The Text of this popular and excellent ballad is given from the Jamieson-Brown MS. It was copied, with wilful alterations, into Scott's Abbotsford MS. called Scottish Songs. Professor Child prints sixteen variants of the ballad...
The Text is taken from Wit Restor'd, 1658, where it is called A Northern Ballet. From the same collection comes the version of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard given in First Series, p. 19. The version popularly known as Johnny...
The Text is taken almost entirely from a copy which was sent in 1780 to Bishop Percy by a Miss Fisher of Carlisle; in the last half of the first stanza her version gives, unintelligibly: ...
The Text is given from a thirteenth-century MS. in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (B. 14, 39): it is thus the earliest text of any ballad that we possess. In the MS. it is written in long lines, four (or six, as in 4...
The Text is from Herd's MSS., two copies showing a difference of one word and a few spellings. Stt. 3 and 5 are interchanged for the sake of the sense. ...
The Text here printed is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. ii. p. 302, etc. He compiled his ballad from a broadside and another copy, Kinge John and Bishoppe, that he found in his Folio MS.; and since he made it a much m...