Argument.--For a jest, the king disguises himself and his men once more, this time in Lincoln green, which he purchases off Robin Hood. The whole party proceeds to Nottingham, where the appearance of so many green mantles cause...
The Text is from a broadside of the seventeenth century from the press of Coles, Vere, Wright, and Clarke, now preserved in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library.
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...
The Text is that given by Percy in the Reliques (1765), with the substitution of w for initial qu, and y for initial z, as in Young Waters (see p. 146). In the fourth edition of the Reliques Percy states that 'this curious song...
The Text is taken from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, where it is entitled The Gowans sae gay. This ballad is much better known in another form, May Colvin (Collin, Collean).
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...
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...
The Text.--As printed in Sharpe's Ballad Book, from the Skene MS. (No. 8). It is fragmentary--regrettably so, especially as stanzas 10-12 belong to Thomas Rymer.