The Text is modernised from the Percy Folio MS. (c. 1650). At two points, after 8.3 and 18.2, half a page of the MS., or about nine stanzas, is missing--torn out and 'used by maids to light the fire' in Humphry Pitt's house, wh...
The Text is taken from the same manuscript as the last. This manuscript is ascribed, from the style of handwriting, to the reign of Henry VI. The ballad is there written without division into stanzas in twenty-four long lines....
The Text is taken from the Percy Folio MS., but the spelling is modernised. There is another version, extant in broadsides to be found in nearly all the large collections; this, when set beside the Folio MS. text, provides a re...
The Text given here is comparatively a late one, from the Roxburghe collection (iii. 456). An earlier broadside, in the same and other collections, gives a longer but curiously corrupted version, exhibiting such perversions as ...
The Text is from Motherwell's Minstrelsy (1827). It is based on a stall-copy, presumably similar to one preserved by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, combined with a version from recitation, which Child none the less calls 'well...
The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar ballad, which substitutes a Sir Andrew Wood for the hero. The version of this ballad...
The Text is formed by a collation of six broadsides printed between 1672 and 1700: they do not, however, present many variations. Here, if anywhere, one would demand licence to make alterations and improvements. In stanza 12 th...
The Text is from Alexander Laing's Scarce Ancient Ballads (1822). A similar version occurs in Buchan's Gleanings (1825). Professor Gummere, in printing the first text, omits six stanzas, on the assumption that they represent pa...
The Text of this ballad was sent to Professor Child by Mr. C. E. Dalrymple of Kinaldie, Aberdeenshire, from whose version the printed variants (Notes and Queries, Third Series, vii. 393, and Aytoun's Ballads of Scotland, i. 75)...
The Text is given mainly from the Cotton MS., Cleopatra C. iv. (circa 1550). It was printed by Percy in the fourth edition of the Reliques; in the first edition he gave it from Harleian MS. 293, which text also is made use of h...
Text.--From the Jamieson-Brown MS. Jamieson, in printing this ballad, enlarged and rewrote much of it, making the burden part of the dialogue throughout. ...
The Text is given from Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, where it first appeared in the tenth edition (1740) in vol. iv. pp. 356-7. Child had not seen this, and gave his text from the eleventh edition of 1750. There is, howe...
Text.--The Percy Folio is the sole authority for this excellent lively ballad. It is here given as it stands in the manuscript, except for division into stanzas. Percy printed the ballad 'verbatim,'--that is, with emendations--...
The Text is taken from Scott's Minstrelsy (1803). It would be of great interest if we could be sure that the reference to 'Hive Hill' in 8.1 was from genuine Scots tradition. In Wager's comedy The Longer thou Lived the more Foo...
The Text of this ballad was taken down before the end of the nineteenth century by the Rev. S. Baring Gould, from a blacksmith at Thrushleton, Devon. ...
The Text is taken from Sandys' Christmas Carols, where it is printed from a broadside. The only alterations, in which I have followed Professor Child, are the obvious correction of 'east' for 'west' (8.1), and the insertion of ...