Works

The Text.--The earliest complete text, here given, was printed by William Copland between 1548 and 1568: there are extant two printed fragments, one printed by John Byddell in 1536, and the other in a type older than Copland's....

'Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur.'
--MAJOR.


The Text.--There are seven texts of the Gest, to be distinguished as
follows:--
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The Text is from Motherwell's Minstrelsy, pp. 44-5.

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The Text is the only one known, that printed by Buchan, Ballads of the North of Scotland, and copied into Motherwell's MS.

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The Text is from a Cottonian MS. of the sixteenth century in the British Museum (Vesp. A. xxv. fol. 178). It is carelessly written, and words are here and there deleted and altered. I have allowed myself the liberty of choosing...

The Text is from a broadside in the Bagford collection (i. 65); other broadsides, very similar, are to be found in the Pepys, Roxburghe, and other collections. The ballad has often been reprinted; and more than one oral version...

The Text is from Kinloch's MSS., where it was written down from the recitation of Mary Barr: it is entitled 'The Earl of Rosslyn's Daughter.'

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The Text is from the Percy Folio, given literatim, with two rearrangements of the lines (in stt. 4 and 22) and a few obvious corrections, as suggested by Hales, and Furnivall, and Child. The Folio version was printed by Jamieso...

The Text is here given from the Percy Folio, with some emendations as suggested by Child.
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The Text.--This ballad was one of two transcribed from the now lost Tytler-Brown MS., and the transcript is given here. A considerable portion of the story is lost between stanzas 6 and 7.

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The Text is given in full from Herd's MSS., where it concludes with a version of Sweet William's Ghost; and the last three stanzas, 42-44, are from Scott's later version of the ballad (1833) from recitation. Child divides the b...

The Text is from the Skene MS., but I have omitted the three final lines, which do not make a complete stanza, and, when compared with Scott's 'Old Lady's' version, are obviously corrupt. The last verse should signify that the ...

The Text is that of Scott's Minstrelsy (1802). It was 'taken down from the recitation of a lady' (his mother's sister, Miss Christian Rutherford), and collated with a copy in the Tytler-Brown MS. The ballad is also called Gil B...

The Text is a combination of three, but mainly from a text which seems to have been sent to Percy in 1775. The other two are from Scottish tradition of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I have made a few chang...

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:
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The Text is taken from Motherwell's Minstrelsy, a similar version being given in Maidment's North Countrie Garland. A few alterations from the latter version are incorporated.
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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 ...

The Text.--As this carol consists of two parts, the first containing the actual story of the cherry-tree, and the second consisting of the angel's song to Joseph, I have taken the first part (stt. 1-12 inclusive) from the versi...

There are here put in juxtaposition three versions in ballad-form of the same story, though fragmentary in the two latter cases, not only because each is good, but to show the possibilities of variation in a popular story. Ther...

These two ballads must be considered together, as the last six verses (18-23) of The Clerk's Twa Sons, as here given, are a variant of The Wife of Usher's Well.

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