Bluegrass Messengers

Boccaccio, Hans Sachs, and the Bramble Briar
by  H. M. Belden
PMLA, Vol. 33, No. 3 (1918), pp. 327-395

[Proofed once, a few mistakes corrected. Footnotes moved to the end.  R. Matteson 2015]

PUBLICATIONS OF THE
Modern Language Association of America 1918
VOL. XXXIII, 3 NEW SERIES, VOL. XXVI, 3

XII- BOCCACCIO, HANS SACHS, AND THE BRAMBLE BRIAR

Of the British ballads not included in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads one of the most interesting is that which, following the example of Professor Tolman's correspondent,^[1] I shall call The Bramble Briar. Altho in poetic quality it is inferior even to that broadside version of Chevy Chase the serious discussion of which in the Spectator provoked the raillery of Wagstaffe, yet I have ventured to deal with it here at some length; for it is interesting not only because of its possible relation to Boccaccio, Hans Sachs, and Keats, but in itself. It is a fairly clear instance of what to some expounders of ballad doctrine is a contradiction in terms: it is a traditional vulgar ballad.

I
The traditional character of The Bramble Briar is evidenced by what we know of its distribution and by the nature of the copies that have come to record. Six of these are American and four British. The first to be published was Bruton Town, which appeared as No. 12 in Mr. Cecil Sharp's Folk Songs from Somerset in 1904.^[2] The next was Miss Katherine Pettit's Kentucky version, The Lonesome Valley, in the Journal of American Folk-Lore in 1907.^[3] I printed a version from Missouri, The lMerchant's Daughter, in the Sewanee Review in April, 1911.^[4] Later in the same year Professor H. G. Shearin published in the same journal a copy from Kentucky, The Apprentice Boy,^[5] differing considerably from Miss Pettit's. In 1911 appeared also a second British version, The Brake o' Briars, reported by Miss Alice E. Gillington from the singing of New Forest gypsies.^[6]

In 1915 Miss Lucy Broadwood published a Hertfordshire version, Lord Burling's Sister, in the Journal of the Folk Song Society,^[7] and with it^[8] Mr. Sharp printed a second Somerset version, In Strawuberry Town. In 1916 Professor Tolman printed one stanza of a version in his possession from Ohio, The Bramble Briar.^[9] Finally, Mr. Sharp has kindly sent me two versions out of several that he has noted recently in the Southern mountains,^[10] which he calls In Seaport Town. A glance at the texts will show that these are all one ballad."^[11]
 
Some of the versions are more complete than others, and three of the English and one of the American copies have changed the denouement, which I take to have been originally as in A 1-V (and B I ?); but all agree ill the plot of the brothers to entice their sister's lover, the "servant man," into the forest under the pretext of a hunting party, his murder there in a lonely spot, the girl's anxious inquiry when they return without him, the revelation of the deed by the ghost of the murdered man appearing to her in a dream,^[12] her journey next day to the place indicated, and her passion of love and grief over the corpse. Nor is it only in the story that the essential identity of the various copies appears. The meter is the same in all; and tho there are comparatively few lines that are identical in all ten of the copies, there is scarcely a line or phrase that is not found in two, three, or more of the versions.

Thus "briars" mark the scene of the murder in A I, II, VI, B I-IV; the corpse is disfigured by "gores of blood" ("a score of blood," "a gore of bled, "great drops of blood") in all except the defective A VI and B I (the latter has instead "dressed all in his bloody coat "); the dead lover is the "dearest bosom friend of mine" in A I, III, "dear beloved friend of mine" in A IV, "darling bosom friend of mine" in A V, " boldest friend of mine" in B I, "some true lover a friend of mine" in B II," a dear bosom friend of mine " in B IV, "the daughter's dearest dear" in A VI; the brothers arouse their sister's suspicion on their return from the murder by whispering together in A I-III and B I; they resent her inquiries in A I( ?), II, B I, II; she tells them, upon her return home, that they both "shall swing" or "be hung," A I-V, B I; etc. Indeed a single reading of the texts puts their unity beyond the need of argument.

The American versions are on the whole fuller, and nearer to one another than to the British versions, all but one of them having retained, for one thing, the death of the brothers by shipwreck, which is lost in the British versions; yet a comparison of the texts forbids the assumption of a distinct American form of the ballad. The girl's determination to die at her lover's grave, with which B II and III conclude; appears also as the conclusion of A VI; her return and denunciation of her brothers, which is a feature of A I-V, appears also in B I. Lines and phrases lacking in some of the American copies appear in one or more of the British versions. Thus "his lips were salty as any brine," lacking in A II, is found in B I; "we'll send him hither (headlong in) to his grave" of A II, IV, V, wanting in A I, III, VI, appears in B II, III; the description of the place where the slain man is buried as a " ditch," which is found in only one of the British versions, is likewise found in one of the American versions.

These instances are sufficient to show that the several copies stand, in general, independently related to some common original, and cannot be grouped geneialogically. It should be noted, however, that the parents' worry over the violent character of their two sons (B II and III), and the girl's use of a handkerchief to wipe the eyes of her dead lover (B II-IV), are not found in any of the! American versions; and that the death of the brothers by shipwreck, found in all the American versions but one, is unknown to the British versions.^[13]

If it is clear that all ten of the versions point back to a common original, it is no less clear, from the many and wide difference's in the texts, that they have come down by  oral tradition thru a considerable number of mouths, if not thru a considerable period of time. No printed copy of the ballad has been found. If it had been issued by the balled press, as was The Constant Farmer's Son (another ballad on the same theme of which more will be said later), we may assume that its text would have continued little changed.

The Constant Farmer's Son was still sung in Sussex a few years ago,^[14] and probably is sung there yet, in much the same form in which it issued from the presses of (Catnach, Such, Taylor, and others in the first half of the last century. If The Bramble Briar had circulated as a stall ballad or in popular song books like The Forget-Me-Not Songster it would not be altogether surprising to find it alive in the mouths of the people in places as wide apart as the Cumberland mountains and the New Forest,- tho we should expect it to hold rather closely to the printed form. In the apparent absence of such means of communication, and in view of the wide variations in the text, one is inclined to account for its existence among the mountaineers of Kentucky and the Ozarks by supposing it to be a part of their English inheritance, brought by their ancestors when they came to this country in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.

The Bramble Briar is, however, of a very different quality from the ballads in Child's collection. For one thing, the text in nearly all copies is extremely corrupt. Some of the texts of our recognized poetic ballads have of course suffered in tradition; but in general a ballad that has flourished long and widely in the hearts of the people, tho it may retain archaic expressions, embody misapprehensions, and resort to folk etymologies, is not likely to show the kind of crudeness-the bad grammar and false diction, amounting frequently to unintelligibility- that marks most of the versions of The Bramble Briar. Lord Thomas, The Yellow Golden Tree, and The Old Man in the North Countree^[15] are ballads that have come down by oral tradition for some generations in this country, and they do not commonly show such corruptions as " an apprentice bound boy from all danger," "a prentice fond from a far intender," all of this was to the same,

A day of hunting whilst prepared,
Thorny woods and valleys where briars grow;
And there they did this young man a-murder,
And into a brake his fair body thrown.

The Bramble Briar has come to us not simply by tradition but by distinctly illiterate tradition. In short, to use terms which, unsatisfactory as they are, have come to have a fairly definite denotation, it is a 'vulgar' rather than a 'popular' ballad. Structurally and stylistically it conforms to the vulgar ballad type. The verse-quatrains of four-beat lines, the first and third lines with feminine endings-is common in vulgar balladry but rarely if ever found in Child's volumes. ^[16] The Bramble Briar shows, further, no trace of a refrain; it makes no use of formulas of question and answer, has no series, no incremental repetition,^[17] and none of the familiar ballad commonplaces. There are no gaps in the action, any more than in Boccaccio's story; each step is related in chronological order and the sequence of events is duly explained.

The following is the very reverse of what Professor Gummere has taught us to recognize as the ballad way of telling a story:

One night while they were sitting courting
He[r] two brother[s] chanced to overhear;
They said this courtship should soon be ended,
We will send him headlong into his grave.

And for to conclude this bloody murder,
These two villains hunting did go;
And upon the salome they loaved and flattered
Along with them hunting to go.

They traveled over high hills and mountains,
Through lonely valleys that were unknown,
Until they came to the bramble briar,
And there they did him kill and thrown.
                                      A11, stzs. 3-5.

Such narrative merit as the ballad has is due not to the method of 'leaping and lingering' but to rapidity and directness and the proper emphases-qualities which it shares with Boccaccio's prose. The Bramble Briar, then, may fairly be called a traditional vulgar ballad: vulgar in structure, diction, narrative method; traditional on the ground of its appearance in widely separated regions and with wide and various differences in text with apparently no help from print. Before attempting to account for its somewhat anomalous status it will be well to consider the question of its relation to certain literary treatments of the same theme. Its relation to the stall ballad of The Constant Farmer's Son can most conveniently be treated last.

II
The general likeness in plot between The Bramble Briar and Boccaccio's story of the pot of basil, Decameron, iv, 5, is, of course, apparent. But it does not follow that the English ballad must be derived from the Decameron. As Professor Kittredge has pointed out,^[18] the ballad lacks what was for Boccaccio and Keats and is for us the distinctive element of that story, the romantic pathos of the girl's planting her dead lover's head in a flower-pot and watering it with her tears. The general resemblance in plot might plausibly be accounted for on the supposition that Boccaccio and the balladist alike had used some popular story current in both countries. And even if that explanation is rejected as unlikely, there remains the question, suggested by Miss Broadwood,^[19] whether the ballad may not be derived from the Decarmeron at second hand thru Hans Sachs, who turned Boccaccio's story into German verse of a popular character in the sixteenth century.

There is even the possibility of derivation thru Keats's Isabella, tho the character of Keats's poem and the presumptive age of the ballad conspire to rule this suggestion out of the probabilities. Let us consider first the argument for direct derivation (thru the medium, of course, of an English translation) from the Decaneron.

Deferring, for the present, consideration of the main difference between Boccaccio's narrative and the English ballad, I believe that a careful examination of the two will reveal resemblances of such a character as to make the theory of independent origin difficult to maintain. The killing of a girl's lover by her brothers is familiar enough in traditional balladry;^[20] apprentices and merchants' daughters are favorite subjects for street ballads; and ghosts are not unknown. But the combination of these elements in 'The Bramble Briar is unusual. Where else in English balladry are a merchant's sons the exponents of cruel and treacherous family pride? In the multitudinous stall ballads about the love of a merchant's daughter for sailor, soldier, or apprentice it is the father, not a brother, that stands in the way of the lovers; and he does not resort to assassination by his own hands, but contents himself, in true business man's fashion, with giving a hint to the press gang (in countless rehashings of the female sailor theme), or at most kills the lover-or the girl herself^[21] --in a sudden burst of passion. There is a cool, calculating malignity about the procedure of these brothers that is rather Latin than English. Enumerated, the points of likeness between the ballad and Boccaccio's story are:

1. A merchant's ^[22] daughter in love with and loved by a dependant of the family-- an "apprentice boy," a "servant man." Whether "salome" in A II in a corruption of " sailor " or of" salesman" or of neither,^[23] I do not know; but in any case the fact that this "prentice boy " or "servant man" ^[24] "plowed the victories all over the main," "plowed the ocean" (AII), "crossed the ocean" (A I),^[25] points to a merchant's factor or supercargo, which is close to what Lorenzo appears to have been. "A vevano . . . questi tre fratelli in uno lor fondaco un giovinetto pisano chiamato Lorenzo, che tutti i lor fatti guidava e faceva." He is called a " factor " in the English translation of 1820.

2. The lovers are overheard^[26] by one of her brothers^[27].

3. Instead of taking vengeance on the spot he reports to his brother,^[28] and they plan together to murder the young man.

4. Their plan is to beguile him, on pretence of a pleasure excursion,^[29] to a lonely spot ^[30] and there murder him and hide the body. The execution of the plan is related with the utmost brevity both in the Decameron and in the ballad.

5. The brothers' behavior toward Lorenzo while they plot his destruction is also noted in the ballad.^[31]

6. The girl questions her brothers when they return without her lover, and they answer her harshly (see below).

7. While she weeps alone upon her bed,^[32] her lover's  ghost appears to her, bloody and disheveled,^[33] bids her cease weeping for him,^[34] tells her he has been murdered by her brothers,^[35] and gives her directions for finding the corpse.^[36]

8. She sets out,^[37] finds the body, and goes into a passion of grief over it.^[38]

9. Finally, five of the six American versions have what looks like a reminiscence from Boccaccio at the conclusion. In the Decameron we are told that the brothers, after the detection of their crime, "senza altro dire, cautamente di Messina uscitisi e ordinato come di quindi si ritraessono, se n'andarono a Neapoli." This may very well have given the hint for the death of the brothers by shipwreck in A I-V.

The argument from these resemblances is cumulative, and depends largely upon the likeness of emphasis upon certain points-the discovery of the lovers, the consultation between the brothers, the girl's anxious questioning, her passion of love and grief over the dead body. No one of them is decisive, of course, but taken together they make it, I think, highly probable that

The Bramble Briar is derived from the story as Boccaccio told it. The most striking single point of resemblance is in the sister's inquiry for her lover when her brothers return without  him, and their answers. These, it is true, are nowhere in the ballad just what they are in the Decameron.

There we read that after the murder the brothers, "in Messina tornati, dieder voce d'averlo per lor bisogne mandato in alcun luogo. I1 che leggiermente creduto fu, per cio che spesse volte eran di mandarlo attorno usati." But this did not satisfy Lisabetta, who continued "molto spesso e sollicitamente i fratei domandandone " until at last "l'urlo de' fratelli le disse: ' Che vuol dir questo? Che hai tu a fare di Lorenzo, che tu ne demandi cosi spesso? Se tu ne domanderai piu, noi ti faremo quella risposta che ti si conviene';" and after this brutal retort she questions them no more, but watches and weeps for his return. In The Bramble Briar, in most of the versions, they tell her that they have "left " or "lost " him "in the woods ahunting."^[39]
 
But in five of the versions there is evidence at this point-where most of the copies are more than usually confused and corrupt, as tho there were something here that the singers did not clearly understand-of recrimination between the brothers and the sister. In A I, II, III, B I she accuses them of whispering together.^[40] In B I the answer is prefaced with an expression
of resentment:

O sister, you offend me so
Because you do examine me;

and in B II (as preserved) this expression of resentment is all the answer she gets. A II, also, has what looks like a sneer at the girl's anxiety:

O sister dear, what makes you inquire
All so for this young man's sake?

Finally, in A I, which is here peculiarly confused, we have:

All on that evening when they returned,
She asked them where's her servant man.
"What makes me ask you? " she seems to whisper,
"Dear brothers, tell me if you can."

"He is lost in the wild woods a-hunting;
His face you never more shall see."
"I'll tell you in plain, you're much affronted;
Oh, now will you explain to me?"

A plausible explanation of the corruption and diversity of the several versions at this point would be that the singers were trying to render something that in the original ballad was a perhaps clumsy and perhaps unintelligent attempt to reproduce the insolent brutality of the brothers' retort in the Decameron. It is Lisabetta, not her brothers, that is affronted in the Italian; but the ballad singer seems not to understand that. He knows that somebody was affronted. It should be noted that in the Decameron this is one of the few passages emphasized by being put into direct discourse.

Apart from the divergence in the conclusion involved in the rejection of the pot of basil motive, the differences between the ballad and Boccaccio's story are few and such as can easily be accounted for.^[41] Boccaccio lays the scene of his story in Messina; the ballad, with characteristic indifference to geography, has a different localization-or rather a different word, for no real localization is intended- in almost every version: "in yonder town," "in yon post-town," "in Bruton Town," "in Strawberry Town." "In portly town," "in a sea-port town," "in Seaport Town" are possibly reminiscences of the fact that Messina is a port.

That when "the brothers and the servant man" go out into the country "a diletto" they go a-hunting is a natural inference; at least Hans Sachs so understood the matter,^[42] and Keats seems to have had the same idea.^[43] The father is a merchant in all the American copies except A V, which has lost the opening stanzas; in B II and III, under the influence of innumerable ballads glorifying the farmer's life, he has become a farmer; in B I (which, like A V and B IV, has lost the opening stanzas) the brother is a lord. In the American versions and in B I the balladist leaves us to assume that the parents are dead; since they have nothing to do with the story he ignores them.

But in B II and III the parents are evidently thought of as still alive, and are used to give a vivid suggestion of the truculence and treachery of the brothers: " By day and night they were a-contriving to fill their parents' hearts with fear." This homely and highly effective touch is apparently to be credited to the balladist. And, finally, the balladist has, in most versions, more definitely visualized the scene of the murder than Boccaccio has done.

The same is true of Hans Sachs's treatment of the theme. Since, further, Sachs proclaims Boccaccio as his authority and follows him pretty closely, retaining the pot of basil in all his versions, it will be convenient here, before considering the bearing of this detail and before we attempt to account for the absence of the pot of basil from the ballad, to examine Sachs's handlings of the story and determine, if possible, whether any of them has served as intermediary between Boccaccio's prose and the English ballad.

III
It was Miss Lucy Broadwood who first suggested that the ballad might owe something to Hans Sachs.^[44] She pointed out that there is a song upon this subject by the German poet "with a versification very similar to that of Bruton Town."

As a matter of fact Sachs used this story four times,^[45] crediting it each time to Boccaccio.^[46] Evidently the story had a great attraction for him, sticking in his mind from 1515, when he made it the subject of his first narrative poem, till 1548, when he condensed it " in dem schwarzen tone H. Vogel "-a period of more than thirty years. II and IV are specimens of Meistergesang, I is a simple apolog, III is a play. This last had an extraordinary hold on German taste, keeping the stage down thru the Thirty Years' WAar into an age when the mastersingers were quite out of fashion. It was acted at court in Dresden in 1646 and again in 1676.^[47] It may therefore easily have come under the notice of English actors touring Germany in the early seventeenth century.

Altho Sachs holds pretty faithfully to his original, which was the fifteenth-century German translation of the Decameron attributed to Heinrich Steinh6wel ^[48] -a rather close rendering of Boccaccio's Italian-yet in ranging from a sixty-line song to a five-act play he has of course contracted and expanded. His changes, however, seldom if ever throw any light upon the differences between the Italian story and the English ballad.

Sachs has put his own German interpretation upon the discovery of the lovers. Boccaccio says simply that the two young people "non seppero si segretamente fare, che una notte, andando l'Isabetta la dove Lorenzo dormiva, che il maggior de' fratelli, senza s'accorgesene ella, non se ne accorgesse," and that this brother, being a prudent youth, pondered the matter, "senza far motto o dir cosa alcuna," until morning, when he went and reported to the other brothers. In all of Sachs's versions except the play one of the brothers seeks confirmation of his suspicions by creeping under his sister's bed, where he spends the night (having come without his sword^[49]) while the lovers are in amorous dalliance just over his head.

Sachs has formed a very definite notion, also, of the thrifty business and domestic arrangements of the three brothers and their sister. In the longer mastersong we are told that after the father's death

Wurden die drey brueder zu rat,
Bei einander zu pleiben
Und iren handel dreiben,
Sich kainer zuuerweiben;
Disz wurt pestet alsa.

Similarly in the Historia; while in the play this arrangement occupies most of the first act, Lisabetta promising, like any "tugendhaftes Madchen,"

Ich . . . wil euch mittler zeit verwalten
Die kiichen und das gantz hauszhalten
Mit meinem aller-hochsten fleisz.

Boccaccio merely says that the brothers "assai ricchi uomini rimasi dopo la morte del padre loro, . . . e avevano una lor sorella chiamata l'Isabetta, giovane assai bella e costumata, la quale, che che se ne fosse cagione, ancora maritata non aveano."

Sachs also varies from his original in the matter of the sister's questioning and the brothers' answer after the murder. In the Historia, when she asks,

"Ist Lorentz bliben dausz?"
Der ein sprach: "Nach im darffst nit fragen.
Er hat uns gar viel guts abgetragen,
Ist darmit haimlich weg gezogen." ^[50]
Sie sprach: "Ich hoff, das sey erlogen."
Der bruder sprach: "Ey lasz darvon,
Eh dir auch wirt darumb dein lon!"
In the longer mastersong they answer:
0 schweig des knechtes stille!
Das selb ist unser ville.

In III and IV he seems not to have found room for this scene.

The most notable difference between Sachs and Boccaccio is the former's visualization of the scene of the murder. Boccaccio, as has already been noted, says merely that it was a " very remote and solitary spot." The ghost gives no description of the place.^[51] Later, when Lisabetta finds the body, we have a hint that it was in a forest:

c tolte via foglie secche che nel luogo erano, dove men dura le parve la terra quivi cavo." ^[52]

But there is no definite suggestion of the landscape.

The place of the hunting expedition and of the murder is variously described in the English ballad. In A I, III, V it is a "lonesome valley," which is reached by travelling "over high hills and mountains and through strange places where it were unknown" (AI), "over high hills and valleys, and through strange places that were unknown (A III), "over hills and mountains and through many of a place unknown" (A V). In A IV it is "a lonesome desert" the way to which is "over hills and lofty mountains and through some lonesome valleys too."

In a variant line of A I it is "a patch of briars." In A II it is "the bramble briar," whither they "traveled over high hills and mountains, through lonely valleys that were unknown." In A VI, the most meager of all the versions, it is a "ditch of briars." In B I it is a "ditch" where "there was no water, where only bush and briars grew." In B II it is a "brake" which one approaches "through woods and valleys where briars grow," similarly in B III, a brake" in "thorny woods and valley where briars grow." In B IV it is " the Brake of Briars" " down in those woods where briars grew." In seven of the ten versions the description is given twice, once in telling of the crime and again in the account of the girl's journey to find the body. Evidently the setting of the crime had a strong emotional interest for the balladist. It is clear too, I think, notwithstanding the absence of the word in three of the American copies, that "briars " marked the place in the original ballad. They have given the title to two versions, one in England and one in America-versions in other respects rather widely separated.^[53]

In Hans Sachs, too, the scene of the crime is concretely marked; but it is a different mark.^[54] In the Historia the ghost says:

Mein leib leyd in dem walt verborgen
Begraben under einer linden.
Mit meinem blut ist besprengt die rinden.
And the following day Lisabeta and her maid
giengen hin in schneller ey.
Inn den walt auff ein welsche meyl,
Suchten, bisz das sie wurden finden
Ein grosse auszgebreytte linden,
Die war besprenget mit seim blut.

Similarly in the longer mastersong and in the play the scene of the murder is marked by a blood-spattered linden tree. Only in the shorter mastersong is this mark omitted.

But there are no " high hills and lofty mountains," no
"lonesome valley," no " brook" or " ditch," and no
" briars " in any of Hans Sachs's four versions of the story.

Despite, then, some interesting similarities in the treatment of Boccaccio's condensed narrative by the German poet and the English balladist, it does not appear that The Bramble Briar owes anything to Hans Sachs. The ballad has nothing[55] in common with the German versions of the story that it might not have derived directly from the Decameron. The metrical resemblance mentioned by Miss Broadwood is hardly significant. The shorter mastersong, to which presumably she refers, is in stanzas of twenty lines, of which lines 1-4, 7-10, and 15-18 constitute quatrains of four-beat lines, rimed alternately, the even-numbered lines with feminine endings. The Bramble Briar in all its versions is in quatrains of four-beat lines, of which the even-numbered lines rime (in intention at least) and the odd-numbered lines have feminine endings. As has been pointed out above, this is a rather frequent verse form in English vulgar balladry.

IV
The strongest argument against deriving the ballad directly from Boccaccio's story appears to be the quite different denouement in the two. Hans Sachs and Keats, professedly telling the story after Boccaccio, retain with varying emphasis the tender and pitiful, tho macabre, vision of the bereaved girl weeping her life away over the great basil plant beneath which she has buried the head of her beloved. I shall try to show that the ballad has rejected this element by instinct, because it is not consonant with ballad feeling; and, further, that the union of the pot of basil story with the murder story is probably a piece of literary artistry, a conscious invention of Boccaccio's.

It cannot be denied that the preservation of a magic head or the head of an enemy, possibly also the head of a loved one, is a feature of primitive custom and has a place in folk-belief. We need only recall the American Indian's beltful of scalps, the Dyak head-hunters, Judith carrying the head of Holofernes, and the unforgettable vision of Herodias's daughter kissing the Baptist's gory head in Atta Troll.[56] Arthurian romance has several cases of a head preserved: Balin strikes off the head of the Lady of the Lake and sends it by his squire to his kinsfolk in Northumberland because she had procured the death of his mother, the Green Knight picks up his own head (which still speaks) and goes off with it, and in Perlesvaus^[57] two damsels appear carrying the heads respectively of a king and a queen, the former on a cushion, "sealed in silver and crowned with gold," the latter trussed up in a pack.^[58] But these romances, full of folk-lore as they are, come to us thru the hands of literary persons; the romance writers were the fashionable litterateurs of their time. Ballads which, as Professor Ker has said,^[59] "reject some of the most delightful fairytales as unfit for their poetical scope --nowhere else, at least in English,^[60] make any use of this motive,^[61] even in its magical aspect. They would be still less ready to use it, as Boccaccio does, without any supernatural connotation. There is a delicacy, a something at once somber, poignant, and fanciful about this part of Boccaccio's story that is alien to the temper of the ballad, especially of the English vulgar ballad. Its appeal is to artistically cultivated sensibilities, not to the coarser nerves for which vulgar ballads are made. It is remarkable that The Bramble Briar should have preserved thru a considerable course of traditional transmission so much as it has of a foreign, Latin temper.^[62] If this element of alien artistry had been added the result could hardly have survived, could indeed hardly have ever been accepted, as a living vulgar ballad.^[63]

It would indeed accord well enough with the history of ballads in recent times if we supposed The Bramble Briar to have lost or rejected this element in the process of tradition. Elements no longer acceptable to the ballad public have disappeared in recent tradition from many traditional ballads. Versions of The Twa Sisters recovered from oral tradition in our time have scarcely a trace left of the detection of the crime by means of a harp strung with the drowned girl's hair; ^[64] The Demon Lover has become The House Carpenter, a merely human story of a runaway wife; and in American versions of The Cruel Ship's Carpenter the old folk-lore of the ghost's holding the ship until it catches the evildoer and rends him in pieces has very commonly fallen away, leaving a murder story of the Florella type.^[65] It is conceivable that The Bramble Briar similarly has lost the pot of basil story. The divergent conclusions-A I-V and B I representing the girl as being forced by hunger, after a vigil at the grave, to return home and there denouncing her brothers (who in the American versions seek escape by sea and are drowned) while in A VI and B II and III she dies by her lover's side and in B IV she poisons her brothers and herself-might be explained as tradition's uncertain effort to find a substitute for a conclusion it did not like. But I incline rather, for reasons already given, to the opinion that the ballad never had this element; that the maker of The Bramble Briar, when he read (or heard) Boccaccio's tale, recognized that for his purposes the pot of basil was no part of the story, and devized his own conclusion, which we have substantially preserved in the fuller American copies of the ballad. For, as I have said, there is reason to believe that the combination of the murder story with the story of the buried head is a piece of literary joinery on Boccaccio's part, or perhaps that the latter is pure artistic invention. The result in either case is one of the world's gems of narrative art; and for that very reason it may be worth while to take a peep into the artist's workshop. He has given us the key.

V
At the close of her story in the Decameron Filomena tell us that "poi a certo tempo divenuta questa cosa manifesta a molti, fu alcuno che compuose quella canzone la quale ancora oggi si canta: cioe,

Quale esso fu lo mal Cristiano
Che mi furo la grasta ecc." ^[66]

At the beginning of the next story we are told that Filomena's narrative "fu alle donne carissima, per cio che assai volte avevano quella canzone udita cantare, ne mai avevan potuto, per domadarne, sapere qual si fosse la cagione per che fosse stata fatta." These Florentine ladies had heard the song, but persistent questioning had failed to elicit any explanation of it.^[67]

The whole song was found by Fanfani in a fourteenth century MS. in the Laurentian library and printed by him in the Le Monnier edition of the Decameron (Firenze, 1857). It had also been printed in an imperfect form in the sixteenth century as one of the Canzoni a Ballo popularly attrnbuted to Lorenzo de' Mledici and Politian. In 1871 Carducci ^[68] published the song in what he believed was its original form, basing his text on a comparison of the Laurentian Ars. and the sixteenth-century prints; and
in this form it may conveniently be found in Scherillo's edition of the Decameron (1914), pp. 212 ff. But as the meaning of the whole song and especially of certapassages in it must here be discussed, I shall reproduce Carducci's text.^[69]

Qual esso fu lo malo cristiano
Lo qual mi fur4 la grasta
Del liassilico mio selemontano?
Cresciut' era in gran podesta^[70]
Ed io lo mi chiantai colla nmia mano:
Fu lo giorn-o della festa.
Chi guasta l'altrui cose, t villania.

Chi guasta l'altrui cose, t villania
E grandissimo ii peccato.
Ed io la mesehi-nella chi' i' n'avia
Una grasta seminata!
Tant' era bella, all' ombra mi dormia.
Della gente invidiata,
Fummi furata, e davaniti alla porta.

Fummi furata, e davanti alla porta.
Dolorosa ne fu' assai
Ed io la mesehinella or fosse io morta,
Che si cara l'accatta'i!
t pur Faltr'ier chi i' n'ebbi mala scorta
Dal messer cui tanto amai.
Tutto lo 'ntorniai di maggiorana.

Tutto lo 'ntorniai di inaggiorana.
Fu di maggio Io bel mese.
Tre volte ho 'nnaffiai la settimana,
Che -son dozi volte el mese,
D'un acqua chiara di viva fontana.
Signor mio, corn' ben s'apprese!
Or a in palese che mi fu raputo.

Or e in palose che ml fu raputo.
Non lo posso pi- celare.
Sed io davanti I'avessi saputo
Che mi dovesse incontrare,
Davanti all' uscio mi sare' iaciuto
Per la mia grasta guardare.
Potrebbemene atare sol l'alto Iddio.

Potrebbemene atar sol l'alto Iddio,
Se fusse suo piacimento,
Dell' uomo che m'e stato tanto rio,
Messo m'ha in pene e 'n tormento,
Che m'ha furato il bassilico mio
Pieno di tanto ulimento.
Suo ulimento tutta mi sanava.

Suo ulimento tutta mi sanava,
Tant' avea freschi gli olori.
E la mattina quando lo 'nnaffiava
Alla levata del sole,
Tutta la gente si maravigliava:
Onde vien cotanto aulore?
Ed io per lo suo amore morrb di doglia.

Ed io per lo suo amor morro di doglia,
Pr' amor della grasta mia.
Fosse chi la mi rinsegnare voglia,
Volentier la raccattrfa:
Cen'once d'oro ch' i' ho nella fonda
Volentier gli le donrfa;
E donerfagli un bascio in disianza.

The song is a girl's lament for the loss of her grasta (or resta; Neapolitan for flower-pot) of Salernian basil. There is nothing in the poem to suggest that this grasta contained the head of her lover, or even that her lover is dead; indeed, there is clear evidence to the contrary: " It was stolen from me," she says, because " just the other day I did not sufficiently guard it from the man I love so much."^[71] Yet its loss is the occasion of passionate grief: " Would I had died before this happened! It is evident now that my basil has been stolen away; I can hide the fact no longer. If I had known beforehand that this would happen, I should have thrown myself down outside before the door to guard my grasta. High God alone could help me, if it were His good pleasure, against the man who has so wronged me,^[72] who has put me in pain and torment because he has stolen from me my basil so sweet-smelling." No wonder the ladies wanted an explanation of the song. But if they knew the text as we have it, it is rather surprising that they should have accepted Filomena's story as an explanation of it. The true explanation is to be found in the folklore attaching to basil aind kindred simples; and a widely known English folk-song affords a significant parallel to this Sicilian ^[73] canzone.

The folk-lore of basil, thyme, and rue is too vast and too confused a matter to be set forth here in any detail. I shall note only a few points that seem to have a bearing on the song under discussion.

Aromatic herbs of the labiate family-basil, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, the sages, the mints-have retained, and very likely by interchange have accumulated, pseudomedicinal virtues from remote antiquity. The virtues ascribed by one authority to basil may be ascribed by another to thyme, or to marjoram, or to savory; the later herbalists, compiling from all their predecessors, find themselves ascribing the same properties to many different herbs, and to the same herb many and sometimes contradictory properties, until old Nicholas Culpepper,^[74] coming to list the virtues of basil, writes:

"This is the herb which all authors are together by the ears about, and rail at one another (like lawyers). Galen and Dioscorides hold it not fitting to be taken inwardly; and Chrysippus rails at it with downright Billingsgate rhetoric: Pliny, and the Arabian physicians, defend it." It is an antidote to the bite or sting of " venemous beasts," yet "being laid to rot in horse-dung, it will breed venemous beasts. Something is the matter; this herb and rue will not grow together, no, nor near one another; and we know rue to be as great an enemy to poison as any that grows. To conclude: It expelleth both birth and afterbirth; and as it helps the deficiency of Venus in one kind, so it spoils all her actions in another. I dare write no more of it."

Bartholomew Zorn,^[75] writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, has nearly four closely-printed pages on basil, alleging among other things that "Frauen, so Basilien Wurtzel und Schwalben-Federn in den Handen halten, wann sie in Kindes-Nothen arbeiten, leichtlich und ohne Schmertzen gebehren." De Gubernatis^[76] gives the best account I have found of the folk-lore of basil. One variety of it, tulasi in Sanskrit, is a sacred plant in Vedic worship, being considered the spouse of Vishnu-- an emblem of the generative power. "It plays a great part in the popular tradition of Greece and Italy; a double significance is given to it, erotic and funereal." He quotes from a letter from a friend in southern Italy: "All our young girls gather a bunch of basil and put it either in their bosom or in their belt ('probably as an emblem of maidenhood; married women fasten it on their heads). . . A young countryman scarcely ever goes to see his sweetheart without wearing a sprig of basil over his ear; but they are careful not to give it, for that would be a mark of contempt." ^[77] In the twenty-second tale of Gentile Sermini (fifteenth century), de Gubernatis tells us further, a pot of basil withdrawn by a young woman from her window informs her lover that he may come up. " Yet basil has most often a sinister significance. The ancient Greeks believed that the sowing of basil must be accompanied by curses, else it would not thrive; whence the saying 'to sow basil,' i. e. to slander. In Crete, basil is a sign of mourning-- altho it is to be seen in every window in the countryside. In a Cretan folk-song the girl cries:
'Basil, herb of mourning! Flourish in my little window; I too will go to bed in woe, and go to sleep a-crying.'"

It is clear that in some of these practises basil is symbolical of virginity. To the same general range of ideas belongs the Moldavian belief^[78] that basil "can stop the wandering youth upon his way, and make him love the maiden from whose hand he shall accept a sprig." Rolland^[79] reports a similar notion in France: "'Le basilic le fait venir' . . . Dicton de jeunes filles relatif a l'amoureux."

In France the same notion seems to have attached itself to thyme or marjoram, tho the record is less definite.^[80] "Reveiller les pots de marjolaine"^[81] meant, in the sixteenth century, to serenade one's sweetheart. In the Departments of Orne, Ille-et-Vilaine, and Oise " Le thym signifie: thym, putain." ^[82] Of serpolet or wild thyme Rolland tells us ^[83] that "en beaucoup d'endroits les filles de la campagne se mettent du serpolet entre les seins pour les parfumer," and quotes from a sixteenth-century cookery book: "Rustici proverbium habent: succosiores esse virgines quae serpillum quam quae museum olent." Basil,
thyme, or marjoram, carried in the bosom or set in flower-pot in the window, the symbolism appears to be the same: the herb represents virginity.^[84]

In England, where the herbalists and compilers of books on the folk-lore of flowers have little to say of this meaning of thyme or basil, a folk-song bears ample evidence that it is none the less current. Since the English song affords an illuminating parallel to the Sicilian basil song I print it here.^[85]

THE SPRIG OF THYME

O once I had thyme of my own,
And in my own garden it grew;
I used to know the place where mny thyme it did grow,
But now it is covered with rue, with rue,
But now it is covered with rue.^[86]

The rue it is a flourishing thing,
It flourishes by night and by day;
So beware of a young man's flattering tongue,
He will steal your thyme away, away,
He will steal your thyme away.

I sowed my garden full of seeds;
But the small birds they carried them away
In April, May, and in June likewise,
When the small birds sing all day, all day,
When the small birds sing all day.

In June there was a red-a-rosy bud,
And that seemed the flower for me;
And oftentimes I snatched at the red-a-rosy bud
Till I gained the willow, willow tree,
Till I gained the willow tree.^[87]

O the willow willow tree it will twist,
And the willow willow tree it will twine;
And so it was that young and false-hearted man
When he gained this heart of mine, of mine,
When he gained this heart of mine.

O thyme it is a precious, precious thing,
On the road that the sun shines upon;
But the thyme it is a thing that will bring you to an end,
And that's how my time has gone, has gone,
And that's how my time has gone.

Altho the symbolism has faded a good deal in this song, as the last stanza especially shows, and is probably but vaguely present to the consciousness of those who now sing it, the meaning of the " thyme " is sufficiently clear; and it is the same as that of the pot of basil in the Sicilian song. It was an inspiration of the literary artist--who was no doubt familiar with the romance stories of magic and treasured heads-to associate this lament with the story of the girl whose lover had been killed by her brothers. The murder plot in itself is too near to Italian daily life and feeling to need any specific ' source."^[88]

What is distinctive about Boccaccio's tale is the burial of the lover's head in the flower pot; and this I believe may most satisfactorily be explained as an artistic inspiration, whereby, at the suggestion of the girl's grief in the popular basil song, Boccaccio has combined with a familiar murder-and-ghost theme hints from romance sources about a treasured head, and so has moulded a new creation in which the original meaning of the basil is lost.^[89] That he was giving an unfamiliar interpretation of the song seems to be implied by the ladies' comment.^[90] That he was giving an impossible one, if he knew the song as it has come down to us, is certain. May he not have intended to hint at the real meaning of the song when he says that the ladies despite their questioning had never been able to learn what it meant? Sophisticated as these ladies undoubtedly are, he might wish to represent them as not understanding the essentially folk symbolism of the basil song.^[91]

We have gone a long way from Perrysville and the Ozark Mountains. If I have made it probable that The Bramrble Briar is derived from the Decameron, there remains to be considered what relation it bears to The Constant Farmer's Son.^[92]

VI
The Constant Farmer's Son, tho it tells essentially the same story as The Bramble Briar, is a distinct ballad. Its versification-stanzas of four seven-beat lines riming in couplets, without feminine endings and with pretty regular internal rime in the third and fourth lines--is quite distinct from that of The Bramble Briar.^[93] The hero is not a "servant man" or apprentice, is not attached in any way to the family, but is a farmer's son. There is no overhearing of the lovers by the brothers; indeed their
love is not a hidden one:

Long time young William courted her and fixed the wedding day,
Their parents all consented . . .

But her brothers have determined that she shall wed a lord who has "pledged his word," and therefore plan to make away with her lover. The occasion they find not in an excursion into the forest, whether for hunting or merely "a diletto," but in a trip to a fair " not far from town." ^[94] The scene of the murder is not described; it was done on the way home, with a " stake "-a favorite instrument of murder in vulgar ballads. When they reach home the sister asks no questions, but they proffer the information that her lover has fallen in love with another girl, and "therefore we came for to tell the same of the constant
farmer's son." To this she makes no reply. At night

      she had a dreadful dream,
She dreamt she saw his body lay down by a crystal stream.

The ghost's appearance is not described, as it is in Boccaccio and The Bramble Briar; indeed it is not a ghost that comes in answer to her lamentations and tells her what has befallen, but merely a dream of him lying dead. She runs straightway to the place (not further described), and there

dead and cold she beheld her constant farmer's son.

The salt tears stood upon his cheeks all mingled with his gore
She shrieked in vain to ease her pain and kissed him ten times o'er,
She gathered green leaves from the trees to keep him from the sun,
And night and day she passed away with her constant farmer's son.

But "hunger it came creeping on," and she went home to find his murderer,"

Crying, Parents dear, you soon shall hear a dreadful deed is done,
In yonder vale lies dead and cold my constant farmer's son.

Up came her eldest brother and said it is not me,
The same replied the younger and swore most bitterly,
But Mary said don't turn so red nor try the laws to shun,
You've done the deed and you shall bleed for my constant farmer's son.

These villains soon they owned their guilt and for the same did die,
Young Mary fair in deep despair she never ceased to cry,
Their parents they did fade away the glass of life was run,
And Mary cried in sorrow died for her constant farmer's son.

Most of the details and emphases by which The Bramble Briar attaches itself closely to Boccaccio's story have disappeared from this distressingly banal stall ballad. On the other hand the three stanzas before the last, especially the phrase about hunger "creeping on" her, have a good deal in common with The Bramble Briar. The natural inference is that The Constant Farmer's Son is a working over of The Bramble Briar by some hack for the ballad press. Taylor of Waterloo Road, who printed ballads about 1830-40,^[95] issued a copy^[96] to which is appended the name of G. Brown; and worthless as such signatures to printed ballads generally are, he may have been the fashioner of this version. At any rate it is just such a ballad as he might be expected to write. And it was successful, too; it was printed by Catnach, Forth, and others in London as well as by Taylor, by Gilbert in Newcastle, Cadman in Manchester, and Wehlman in New York; ^[97] and as we have seen, it was still sung in Sussex a few years ago.^[98]

VII
In any consideration of the history and affiliations of a ballad there lies in the background the ultimate question: Who made it? By what sort of person, at least, and under what circumstances, was it made, and how has it been spread and perpetuated? The question is especially interesting in the case of a ballad that has a definite literary source. I have only speculative suggestions to offer. If The Constant Farmer's Son was made from The Branible Briar, then the latter must have been in existence before the time of C'atnach and Taylor. How long before it is difficult to judge. The earliest English translation of Boccaccio's story was Turbervile's,^[99] in the sixteenth century. The complete Decameron was published in translation in 1620, and this translation was several times reissued in the seventeenth century. A new translation appeared in 1702, and this was twice reissued in the eighteenth century; and there were four more editions before the middle of the nineteenth century.^[100] Of these, none that I have been able to consult^[101] has any peculiarities to mark it as the particular source of our ballad. There is nothing in the language or style of the ballad to indicate antiquity. I should be inclined to assign it to the early eighteenth century.

Who made it? Somebody, certainly; a ballad that tells so definite a story and retains such clear marks of derivation from a definite literary source, a ballad without refrain or the customary repetition and commonplaces, is neither a product of the homogeneous dancing throng nor the chance aggregate of traditional fragments, like some of the love-lorn ditties now found among ballad folk.^[102] On the other hand there, is no evidence that it originated in that professional ballad press with which The Constalnt Farmer's Son was so great a favorite. Indeed its appearance only in remote country places, on both sides of the ocean, and the diversified, corrupt, and often defective character of the texts are arguments, so far as they go, against its having been disseminated as a stall ballad.

The following hypothesis will perhaps fit the facts so far as they are known.

The itinerant entertainer-blind fiddler, street singer, roaming tinker, gypsy,^[103] mountebank, tent- or wagon showman- has long been and still is a feature of the social life of rural communities. From Sidney's blind crowder, and long before, down to the "huckster" Wallace, who made and sang in his tent-show a ballad on a notorious murder case in Missouri a few years ago,^[104] the succession has never been broken. If we imagine such an entertainer, sufficiently lettered to read a translation of the Decameron [105] and sufficiently of the vulgar to see the possibilities of this story for vulgar balladry, we have a conceivable origin for our ballad. If we further suppose that after making it known in the parts of England in which he traveled he, or someone following his trade, came to try his fortunes in the colonies and brought the ballad with him, we shall have an explanation of its appearance here.^[106]

Ballads so originating may have a considerable currency, as the entertainer moves from place to place thru his humble clientele, without ever being drawn into the field of the metropolitan ballad press.^[107] Yet the comparative completeness and similarity of certain of the American versions of The Bramble Briar (A I, II, IV) suggest that in this country it circulated at some time in print. Quite probably it did. The itinerant singer not infrequently has some local printer strike off copies of the songs in his repertory to be offered for sale to those who, after hearing him sing, desire to have the text of a song so that they may sing it themselves.^[108] Print of this sort is limited in circulation practically to the region in which the singer moves, and is little likely to come into the net of-the collector. Presenting the text as the singer, often quite illiterate, knows it, it may of course embody gross corruptions.

There is still another way in which oral tradition is supplemented in the dissemination of ballads. From the sixteenth century to the present time ballad-lovers have made manuscript books of the ballads they liked.[109] Such collections are still made in Missouri, and no doubt in other parts of the country. Sometimes the texts appear to be copied from print, at least are of ballads easily obtainable in print and correspond closely to printed copies; sometimes they are just as clearly set down from memory,
showing mishearings and lacunae. When, as is most often the case in the ballad-books I have seen, the writer is barely literate, this method of transmission is a fruitful source of corruption in the text-especially at two or three removes. Readings like "calmy" (A II) and "camelite" (A I) for "comely," and "salome" for " sailor" (? A II), probably arose in this way.

On the whole, however, the state of the texts of The Bramble Briar must be ascribed to oral transmission thru a considerable series of simple and unlettered singers, some of whom have made substitutions and additions of their own where memory failed or fancy prompted. In that sense The Bramble Briar is a traditional ballad. And its substantial identity thru all its variations is a striking evidence of the tenacity of tradition.

The suggestion here offered as to the origin of our ballad is confessedly vague and frankly hypothetical. We have no documentary evidence about it antedating Mr. Sharp's record of 1904. I shall be content if I have convinced my readers that The Bramble Briar, in all its versions, is one ballad, of the " vulgar " type, traditional in England and America, and drawn from a literary source; and, incidentally, that the Italian canzone had a meaning quite different from that which Boccaccio seems to assign to it.

H. M. BELDEN.

TEN TEXTS OF The Bramble Briar
[Since the variations are chiefly a matter of putting in or leaving out, I have for convenience in collation numbered the lines in each text on the basis of the aggregate of lines. Differences not indicated by this method can easily be checked up by comparison. The stanza division is not indicated, but will be readily found (in A I, 11. 77 and 82 are recorded in two forms). In only one case is the order of the lines changed from that in the recorded text, viz., in A I, 11. 49-53, where the recorded order is appended in ( ). Elsewhere, numbers in ( ) indicate that the line is repeated from another place in the version.]

A I
THE APPRENTICE BOY
H. G. Shearin in The Sewanee Review, xix, pp. 321 f.

1 In yon post-town there lived a margent,
2 He had two sons and a daughter fair;
3 There lived a prentice-boy about there,
4 Who was the daughter's dearest dear.
5
6
7 Ten thousand pounds was this gay lady's portion;
8 She was a fair and a camelite dame;
9 She loved this young man who crossed the ocean;
10 He told her how he could be so deslain.
11
12
13
14
15
16 One day they was in the room a-courting;
17 The eldest brother chanced to hear;
18
19 He went and told the other brother,
20
21
22
23
24
25
26 They would deprive her of her dear.
27 Her brothers studied on this cruel matter,
28 Concluded a-hunting they would go,
29
30 And with this young man they both would flatter;
31 A-hunting with them he had to go.
32 They traveled over high hills and mountains
33 And through strange places where it were unknown,
34
35 Till at length they came to some lonesome valley,
36
37 And there they killed him dead and thrown.
38 All on that evening when they returned,
39
40 She asked them where's her servant man.
41
42
43
44
45 'What makes me ask you?' she seems to whisper,
46 'Dear brothers, tell me if you can.'
47
48
49 'I'll tell you in plain, you're much affronted; (3)
50 Oh, now will you explain to me.' (4)
51 'He is lost in the wild woods a-hunting; (1)
52
53
54
55 His face you never more shall see.' (2)
56 All on that night, while she lay sleeping,
57 He came and stood at her bed-feet,
58
59 All covered over in tears a-weeping,
60 All wallowed o'er in gores of blood.
61
62
63 He says, 'My love, it's but a folly;
64 For this is me that you may see-
65 Your brothers both bein. rash and cruel-
66
67
68
69 In such a valley you may find.'
70 All on next morning when she arose,
71 She dressed herself in silk so fine;
72
73 She traveled o'er hills and mountains
74 Her own true lover for to find.
75 She traveled over high hills and mountains
76 And through strange places where it were unknown,
77 Till at length she came to some lonesome valley,
77 Till at length she came to a patch of briars,
79
80 And there she found him killed and thrown.
81
82 His pretty cheeks with blood were dyed;
82 His lips were bloody as any butcher;
83 His lips (cheeks) were salty as any brine;
85
86 She kissed them over and over, a-crying,
87
88 'You dearest bosom friend of mine.'
89 Three days and nights she tarried with him
90
91
92
93
94
95 Till she thought her heart would break with woe,
96 Until sharp hunger came cropping on her,
97 Which forced her back home to go.
98 All on that evening when she returned,
99
100 Her brothers asked her where she'd been-
101
102 'O ye hard-hearted, deceitful devillions,
103 For him alone you both shall swing.'
104 Her brothers studied on this bloody matter, (27)
105 Concluded the ocean they would sail;
106 'My friend, I tell you, it's on the morrow
107 The raging sea there for to sail.'
108 The sea began to roar, I think no wonder
109 That they two villyons should be cast away;
110 And broadways they came tosling under;
111 The sea did open and provide their grave.

A II
THE BRAMBLE BRIAR
Sent me by Professor Tolman in 1917; communicated to him by Miss Mary O. Eddy, who got it from Miss Jane Goon of Perrysville, Ohio. See J. O. A. F. L., xxix, p. 169.

1 In portly town there lived  a merchant,
2 Who had two sons and a daughter fair,
3 And a prentice fond from a far intender,
4
5
6 Who plowed the victories all over the main.
7 Ten thousand pounds it was her portion;
8 She was a neat and calmy dame;
9 And upon the salome that plowed the ocean,
10
11
12
13
14
15 She had a notion to bestow the same.
16 One night while they were sitting courting,
17 He two brother chanced to overhear.
18
19
20
21
22
23
24 They said this courtship should be ended,
25 'We will send him headlong into his grave.'
26
27 And for to conclude this bloody murder
28 These two villains hunting did go;
29
30 And upon the salome they loaved and flattered,
31 Along with them hunting to go.
32 They traveled over high hills and mountains,
33 Through lonely valleys that were unknown,
34 Until they came to the bramble briar,
35
36
37 And there they did him kill and thrown.
38 And when they had back home returned,
39
40 Their sister ask for the servant man.
41
42
43 'Oh! sister dear, what makes you inquire
44 All so for this young man's sake?'
45 'Because I thought you seemed to whisper.
46 Come tell me, brothers, or my heart will break.'
47
48
49
50
51 'We left him in the woods a-hunting,
52 And we no more of him could find.'
53
54
55
56 One night, while she was lying sleeping,
57 He appeared to her bedside;
58
59 And he was all in tears a-weeping
60 And all rolled over in gores of blood.
61 He says: 'My dear, leave off this crying
62
63 It is a folly for you to know;
64
65 For your two brothers killed me, rash and cruel;
66
67
68
69 In such a place, love, you may me find.'
70
71
72
73
74
75 She traveled o'er high hills and mountains,
76 Through lonely valleys that were unknown,
77 Until she came to the bramble briar,
78
79
80 And there they had him killed and throwed.
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89 Three days and nights she tarried by him,
90 Kissing on her bended knees;
91
92 When in that time she was constrained
93 To utter forth such words as here:
94 'I had a mind for to stay by him
95 Until my heart it did break with woe;
96 But I felt that hunger came creeping o'er me,
97 Which forced me back home to go.'
98 And when she had back home returned,
99
100 Her brothers ask where she had been.
101
102 'Be gone, ye proud and deceitful villains!
103 For him alone you both shall swing.'
104 And for to shun this bloody murder,
105 These two villains to sea did go;
106 And to tell the truth it was on the morrow
107 The stormy winds began to blow.
108 The winds did blow, and it was no wonder;
109 These two villains were cast away;
110 And by the flood they were lost under,
111 And the raging sea formed their grave.
112
113
114
115

A III
THE LONESOME VALLEY
Katherine Pettit in Jour. of Amer. F.-L., xx, pp. 259 f.

1 In yonder town there lived a merchant;
2 He had two sons and a daughter fair:
3
4
5 Away lone down in a lone green meadow,
6 A raging sea there for to sail.
7 Six thousand pounds was this lady's portion;
8 She was a fair and comely dame;
9 She loved a young man o'er the ocean
10 Which caused her to look there so disdain.
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27 They studied o'er this cruel matter;
28 Concluded a-hunting they would go;
29
30 And this young man they both did flatter,
31 Till a-hunting with them he did go.
32 They traveled over high hills and valleys,
33 And through strange places that were unknown;
34
35 At length they came to a lonesome valley
36
37 And there they did him kill and throw.
38 All on that evening as they returned
39
40 The sister asked for her servant man:
41
42
43
44
45 'What makes me ask, you seem to whisper;
46 Dear brothers, tell me if you can.'
47
48
49
50
51
51
52
53
54
55
56 All on that night as she lay mourning,
57 Her true love stood by her bedside
58
59 All covered over and the tears a-flowing,
60 All wallowed over in the gores of blood.
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70 All on next morning when she arose,
71 She dressed herself in silk so fine;
72
73 She traveled over high hills and valleys,
74 Her own true love for to find.
75 She traveled over high hills and valleys,
76 And through strange places that were unknown;
77 At length she came to a lonesome valley,
78
79
80 And there she found him killed and thrown.
81
82 His pretty cheeks with blood were dyed,
83 His lips were salt as any brine;
84
85
86
87 She kissed him o'er and 'O,' she cried,
88 'You're the dearest bosom friend of mine.'
89 Three days and nights she tarried with him
90
91
92
93
94
95 Till she thought her heart would break with woe;
96 She felt sharp hunger approaching on her,
97 Which forced h er back home to go.
98 All on that evening as she returned,
99
100 Her brothers asked her where she had been:
101
102 'You are too hard-hearted, deceitful villains,
103 For him alone you both shall swing.
104 They studied o'er this bloody matter; (27)
105 Concluded the ocean they would sail,
106
107
108
109
110 The wind did blow, and I think no wonder,
111 The sea did open and provide a grave.

A IV
THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER
H. M. Belden in The Sewanee Review, xrx, pp. 222 f.

1 In a seaport town there lived a merchant,
2 He had two sons and a daughter fair.
3 An apprentice bound boy from all danger
4 Courted this merchant's daughter fair.
5
6
7 Five hundred pounds was made her portion;
8 She was a neat and cunning dame:
9
10
11
12
13
14 Her brothers were so hard cruel,-
15 All of this was to the same.
16 One evening they were silent, courting,
17 Her brothers chanced to overhear,
18
19
20
21
22
23
24 Saying, 'Your courtship will soon be ended,
25 We will send him hither to his grave.'
26
27
28
29 Next morning early, breakfast over,
30
31 With them a-hunting he did go;
32 They went over hills and lofty mountains
33 And through some lonesome valleys too,
34
35
36 Until they came to a lonesome desert,
37 There they did him kill and throw.
38 When they returned back home that evening
39
40 Their sister asked for the servant man;
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51 'We lost him in the woods a-hunting
52 And never more we could him find.'
53
54
55
56 Next morning she was silent, weeping,
57 He came to her bedside and stood
And there she found him killed and thro.
58
59 All pale and wounded, ghastly looking,
60 Wallowed o'er in gores of blood.
61 Saying, 'Why do you weep, my pretty fair one?
62
63 It is a folly you may pawn:
64
65
66
67 Go over hills and lofty mountains,
68
69 This lonesome place you may me find.'
70
71
72
73
74
75 She went over hills and lofty mountains
76 And through some lonesome valleys too,
77 Until she came to a lonesome desert,
78
79
80
81
82 His handsome cheeks the blood was dyeing,
83 His lips were salt as any brine;
84
85
86 She kissed him o'er and o'er, crying
87
88 'This dear beloved friend of mine.'
89 Three days and nights she did stay by him,
90 'Twas on her bended knees she stood;
91 All in the height of her great anger
92
93 She uttered forth such words as these:
94 'My love, I thought I would stay by him
95 Until my heart should break with woe;
96 But I feel sharp hunger growing on me
97 Which forces me back home to go.'
98 When she returned back home that evening
99
100 Her brother asked her where she'd been.
101
102 'You hard and cruel and unkind creatures!
103 For him alone you both shall swing.'
104 And then to avoid all shame and danger
105 Away to sea they both did go.
106
107
108
109
110 The wind did blow and it was no wonder
111 The roaring sea proved both their graves.

A V
IN SEAPORT TOWN (I)
Sent to me by Mr. Sharp in 1917 from his collections in the Southern mountains.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16 One evening all alone atalking
17 Her brothers cease for to overhear,
18
19
20
21
22
23
24 Saying: 'Your courtship now will soon be ended.
25 Will you force him along into his grave?'
26
27
29 They rose up early the next morning,
28 A game of hunting for to go,
30 And upon this young man they both insisted
31 For him to go along with them.
32 They wandered over hills and mountains
33 And through many a place unknown
34
35 Till at last they came to that lonesome valley
36
37 And there they killed him dead alone.
38 When they return back the next evening
39
40 Their sister ask for the servant man,
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51 Saying: 'We lost him on a game of hunting,
52 No more of him it's could we find.'
53
54
55
56 While she lie on her bedside slumbering,
57 The servant man did appear to her,
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65 Saying: 'Your brother killed me rough and cruel
(66) All wallowed in a score of blood.'
67
68
69
70 She rose up early the next morning
71 And dressed herself in a rich array,
72
73
74 Saying: 'I'll go and I'll find my best beloved
(60) All wallowed in a score of blood.'
75 She wandered over the hills and mountains
76 And through a many of a place unknown
77 Till at last she came to that lonesome valley
79
80 And there she found him dead alone.
81
82 Saying: 'Your eyes look like some bloody butcher,
83 Your eyes look like some salt or brine.'
84
85
86 She kissed his cold, cold lips and crying,
87
88 Said: 'You are the darling bosom friend of mine.'
89
90
91
98 When she returned back the next evening,
99
100 Her brothers asked her where she'd been.
101
102 'O hold your tongue, you deceitful villains,
103 For one alone you both shall hang.'
104 Her brothers then they came convicted
105 To jump in a boat and finally leave.
106
107
108
109
110 The wind did blow and the waves came o'er them;
111 They made their graves in the deep blue sea.

A VI
IN SEAPORT TOWN (II)
Sent to me by Mr. Sharp in 1917 from his collections in the Southern mountains.

1 In Seaport Town there lived a merchant,
2 He had three sons and a daughter dear,
3 And among them all was the prettiest boy;
4 He was the daughter's dearest dear.
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16 One evening late they were in the room courting,
17 Her oldest brother perchance did hear.
18
19 He went and told his other brother,
20
21
22
23
24
25
26 'Let's deprive her of her dearest dear.'
27
28 They rose up so early next morning.
29 A-hunting, a-hunting they must go.
30 But little did he think of the bloody murder,
31 A-hunting he did agree to go.
32
33
34
35
36
37
38 And they came back so late in the evening,
39
40 She enquired of her servant boy.
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51 'O he got lost in the wild woods hunting,
52
53 And his fair face you shall see no more.'
54
55"
56
57
68
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70 She rose up so early next morning,
71
72 She fetched a sigh and a bitter groan.
73
74
75
76
77 She hurried till she found him in a ditch of briars,
78
79
80 Where her true love had been killed and thrown.
81
82 His eyes looked like some bloody butcher,
83 His lips looked like some salt or brine.
84
85
86 She kissed his cold, cold chin a-crying:
87
88 'You are the daughter's dearest dear.
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112 Since my brothers been so cruel will stay with you.'
113 As to force your sweet love away,
114 One grave shall preserve us both together;
115 As long as I have breath
____________________

B I
LORD BURLING'S SISTER
Laura E. Broadwood in Jour. of the F. S. Soc., v, pp. 123 ff.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19 Lord Burling told his eldest brother
20 'See how they did sport and play! '
(18) He told his secret to none other,
(19) To his eldest brother he did say.
23
24
25
26
27
28 They asked him to go ahunting,
29
30 Without any fear or strife,
31 These two bold and wicked villains
32 They took away this young man's life.
33 And in the ditch there was no water
34 Where only bush and briars grew;
35 They could not hide the blood of slaughter
37 So in the ditch his body threw.
38 When they returned home from hunting,
39
40 She asked for her servantman:
41
42
43
44
45 'I ask you because I see you whisper,
46 So, brothers, tell me if you can.'
47 'O sister, you offend me so
48 Because you do examine me;
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56 As she lay dreaming on her pillow,
57 She thought she saw her true love stand,
58 By her bedside as she lay weeping,
60 Was dressed all in his bloody coat.
61 'Don't weep for me, my dearest jewel,
62 Don't weep for me, nor care nor pine,
65 For your two brothers killed me so cruel-
66
67
68
69 In such a place you may me find.'
70 As she rose early the next morning,
71
72 With heavy sigh and bitter groan,
73
74
75
76
77
78 The only love that she admired
79
80 She found that in the ditch was thrown.
81 But in the ditch there was no water,
(77) Where only bush and briars grew, (34)
They could not hide the blood of slaughter
(80) So (though) in the ditch his body threw.
82 The blood that on his lips was drying,
83 His tears were salt as any brine.
84
85
86 She sometimes kissed him, sometimes crying
87
88 'Here lies the boldest friend of mine! '
89 Three nights and days has she sat by him
90
91
92
93
94
95 When her poor heart was filled with woe,
96 Till faintness came a-creeping on her,
97 And home she was obliged to go.
98 When she returned to her brothers:
99 'Sister, what makes you look so thin?'
100
101 'Brother, don't you ask the reason,
102
103 Then (and) for his sake you shall be hung!'

____________________

B II
IN STRAWBERRY TOWN
C. J. Sharp in Jour. of the Folk Song Soc., v, pp. 126 f.

1 In Strawberry Town there lives a farmer,
2 He had two sons and one daughter dear,
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 By day and night he got deluded,
13 Which caused their parents more's hearts with care.
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21 'What do you think? Our servant man,
22 I think our servant man court our sister,
23 I think they have a great mind to wed;
24 We'll put an end to all their courtship
25 And send him silent to the grave.'
26
27
28 A match of hunting it was prepared
29
30
31
32
33
34 Through woods and valleys where briars grow,
35
36 And there they did this young man murder
37 And in the brake his body throw.
38 As they was returning home from hunting,
39 Not thinking on the harm they'd done:
40
41 'You're welcome home, my poor dear brothers,
42 And now pray tell me where the serving man?'
(38) As they was returning home from hunting
44 Not a sight of him could she see:
45
46
47 'Since, dear sister, you do offend us
48 And straightly examine me.'
49
50
51
52
53
54 Then to bed this fair maid went
55 Lamenting for her own true love;
56
57 She dreamt she saw her own true lover
58
59
60 Covered over in a gore of blood.
61
62
63
64
65
66 'You rise up early tomorrow morning
67
68 And straightway early to brake you know
69 And there you find my body lying
(60) Covered over in a gore of blood.'
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84 She took her handkerchief from her pocket
85 And wiped his eyes though he was blind,
86
87 'Because he was some true lover,
88 Some true lover a friend of mine.
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112 And since my brothers have been so cruel
113 To take your tender sweet life away
114 One grave shall hold us put together
115 And laying to you till death I'll stay.'

B III
BRUTON TOWN
C. J. Sharp in Jour. of the Folk Song Soc., II, p. 42.

1 In Bruton Town there lives a farmer,
2 Who had two sons and one daughter dear.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 By day and night they was a-contriving
13 To fill their parents' hearts with fear.
14
15
16
17
18 He told his secrets to no other,
19 But unto her brother he told them to:
20
21
22 'I think our servant courts our sister,
23 I think they has a great mind to wed;
24 I'll put an end to all their courtship,
25 I'll send him silent to his grave.'
26
27
28 A day of hunting whilst prepared,
29
30
31
32
33
34 Thorny woods and valley where briars grow;
35
36 And there they did this young man a-murder,
37 And into a brake his fair body thrown.
38
39
40
41 'Welcome home, my dear young brothers,
42 Pray tell me, where's that servant man?'
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51 'We've a-left him behind where we've been a-hunting,
52
53 We've a-left him behind where no man can find.'
54 She went to bed crying and lamenting,
55 Lamenting for her heart's delight;
56
57 She slept, she dreamed, she saw him lay by her,
58
59
60 Covered all over in a gore of bled.
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70 She rose early the very next morning,
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79 Unto the garden brook she went:
80
81 There she found her own dear jewel
(60) Covered all over in a gore of bled.
83
84 She took her handkerchief out of her pocket
85 For to wipe his eyes for he could not see;
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112 'And since my brothers have been so cruel
113 To take your tender sweet life away,
114 One grave shall hold us both together,
115 And along, along with you to death I'll stay.'
_________________

B IV
THE BRAKE O' BRIARS
Alice E. Gillington in Songs of the Open Road, pp. 10 f.

1
2
3
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28 Then the match was made to go a-hunting,
29
30
31
32
33
34 Down in those woods where briars grew;
35
36 And there they did the young man murder;
37 In the Brake of Briars there him they threw.
38 Then they rode home the same night after,
38 They rode home most speedily;
40
41 'You're welcome home, my own two brothers,
42 But pray tell me where's your servant man?'
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51 ' We lost him as we rode a-hunting,
(34) Down in the woods where briars grow;
52 Where we lost him we could not find him,
53 And what became of him we do not know.
54 Then she went to bed the same night after;
54 She went to bed immediately,
55
56
57 She dreamt to see her own true loved one;
58
59
60 He was covered all over in great drops of blood.
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70 She rose early the next morning,
71
72
73
74
75
76
77 To search the woods where briars grow;
78 And as she dreamed so there she found him;
79
80 In the Brake of Briars he was killed and thrown.
81
82
83
84 Then she pulled a handkerchief from her bosom,
85 And wiped his eyes as he lay as blind;
86 She ofttime weeped in sorrow, saying,
87
88 'There lies a dear bosom friend of mine.'
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98 Then she rode home the same night after,
98 She rode home most speedily;
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116 She poisoned herself and her own two brothers:
117 All four of them in one grave do lie!

______________________________________________

FOOTNOTES:

1 A. H. Tolman, Some Songs Traditional in the United States, Journal of Amer. Folk-Lore, xxix, p. 168.

2 I have used the more exact record of the text, as he took it down from the singing of a Mrs. Overd at Longport in Somerset in August, 1904, given in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, II, p. 42.

3 Ballads and Rhymes from Kentucky, ed. by G. L. Kittredge, J. A F.-L., xx, pp. 259 f.

4. The Vulgar Ballad, Seio. Rev., xix, pp. 222 f.

5. British Ballads in the Cumberland Mountains, ibid., pp. 321 f.

6. Songs of the Open Road, pp. 10 f. Only the last seven of the twelve stanzas belong to The Bramble Briar; the first five are a form of A Brisk Young Country Lady.

7 J. F. S. S., v, pp. 123 f.

8. Ibid., pp. 126 f.

9 J. A. F. -L., xxIx, p. 169. Secured for him by Miss Mary O. Eddy from Miss Jane Coon of Perryville, Ohio. Professor Tolman has kindly sent me a complete copy of this version for use in the present article.

10. Since this paper was written Mr. Sharp has published his admirable collection, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (Putnam, N. Y., 1917). In Seaport Town (No. 38) is represented by one text fuller than A V and the beginnings of three others---all from North Carolina.

11. Pp. 376 ff. For convenience of reference I have numbcered the several versions as follows:

American versions-
A I: The Apprentice Boy (Shearin).
A II: The Bramble Briar (Tolman).
A III: The Lonesome Valley (Pettit).
A IV: The Merchan't's Daughter (Belden).
A V: In Seaport Town 1 (Sharp).
A VI: In Seaport Town 2 (Sharp).

British versions-
B I: Lord Burling's Sister (Broadwood).
B II: In Strawberry Towun (Sharp).
B III: Bruton Town (Sharp).
B IV: The Brake o' Briars (Gillington).

12. "The lack of this item in A VI is doubtless a mere failure of memory on the part of the singer.

13. B I, however, in which the girl, instead of dying on her lover's grave, returns to denounce her brothers, probably lacks this feature only by lapse of memory. B IV has a conclusion of its own: the girl poisons herself and her brothers, and "All four of them in one grave do lie, a denouement which may plausibly be credited to the gypsies from whom this version was recorded. The word "brake," also (B II-IV), is not found in the American versions.

14. Journal of the Folk Song Society, I, p. 160.

15 I.e., Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, The Golden Vanity, and The 'Twa Sisters, Nos. 73, 286, and 10 in Child.

16 It is the verse form of The Drowsy Sleeper, The Silver Dagger, Little Sparrow, Lord Bateman, William Taylor, and many ballads on the theme of the returned lover, such as The Sweetheart in the Army, John Reilly, and William Hall. A hasty glance at the one-volume edition of Child showed no ballad in which this verse form was carried thru consistently. Bonnie Annie (No. 24) is in four-heat couplets with feminine endings.

17. Such repetition as it has, e. g. the stanza about the high hills and valleys (or mountains) that occurs twice in A I-IV, the corresponding matter in B I and IV, the "gores of blood" in B II and III, seems due merely to inertia; it has little in common with the repetition in Babylon or in Lord Randal.
 

18. In his notes to Professor Tolman's article, J. A. F.-L., xxix,p. 168.

19 In a note on this ballad in Folk Songs from Somerset.

20 E. g., The Cruel Brother, Clerk Saunders, The Bent Sae Brown, The Braes o Yarrow. When I printed A IV and The Constant Farmer's Son in the Sewanee Review in 1911, Mr. Wm. MacM:ath of Edinburgh wrote to me: " It would not greatly surprise me if The Constant Farmer's Son and The Merchant's Daughter should be found to have an affinity with The Braes o Yarrow "; and he pointed out  particularly that in versions J, K, L of that ballad the lover is a " servant lad in Gala." The Braes o Yarrow does indeed show what the popular ballad makes of such a theme. There is social inequality between the lovers in most of the versions; those in which the man is a "servant lad" have not a little of the vulgar ballad quality; but he is nowhere presented as in the service of the girl's brothers. And despite his social status the lover is heroic; he fights against heavy odds, disposing in proper ballad fashion of all his assailants (nine in most versions) save one, who gets in behind him or overcomes him when exhausted by the length of the contest. Either the fight is agreed upon beforehand between the combatants (A, B, C, D, E, F, HI, I) or the girl's father sends the lover forth to fight for her hand (J, K, L), or the girl herself (whether intentionally or not is not clear) betrays him into an ambush (M, IN). In The Bramble Briar, on the other hand, as in the Decameron, there is no fighting; the lover is simply and suddenly murdered, and the telling of it is as brief as the doing. There is in several of the versions of The Braes o Yarrow a foreboding dream, but no revelation by a ghost. For the girl's behavior afterwards see below, Note 63.

21 E. g. in The London Merchant (Pitts). Most commonly, however, these street ballads of the merchant's daughter end with the
father blessing the wilful pair.

22. The opening is lacking in AV and BI and IV. In B II and III the father has become a farmer under the influence of countless stall ballads glorifying the farmer's life. In B I the brother is a lord.

23. Miss Goon, being questioned upon this point by Miss Eddy, averred that "it is the name of the man that these two brothers killed," but darkened counsel by adding that it is a "a feminine name from the Hebrew Solomon."

24 He is a " servant man" in all the versions and a "prentice" in A I, II, IV.

25. A raging sea there for to sail" (A III), unintelligible as it stands, is probably a vague reminiscence of the same idea.

26. "One day" (A I), "one night" (AII), "one evening" (A IV-VI).

27" The oldest brother" (A I), "he[r] two brdther[s]" (A II), "her brothers" (A IV, V), "her oldest brother" (A VI), a brother in B I, , III. This part of the story has been elided in BIV; see note 6, above. Boccaccio has: "il maggior de' fratelli."
Only one version of the ballad, A VI, agrees with Boccaccio in giving the girl three brothers; in the others she has two. But the three brothers have no distinct functions in the plot; fall that the action demands is that there shall be more than one, so that they may be seen plotting together. Two brothers will do as well here as three; and Keats, who professedly drew his story from Boccaccio, gives Isabella two brothers, not three.

29 In the ballad, a hunting party; Boccaccio says simply: " sembianti faccendo d'andare, fuori della cittla a diletto."

30 "Un luogo molto solitario e rimoto"; " a lonesome valley" (A I, III), " the bramble briar " (A II), " a lonesome desert" (A IV), "that lonesome valley" (A V), "a ditch . . . where only bush and briars grew " (B I), "a brake . . . where briars grow" (B II, III), down in those woods where briars grow, ... in the brake of briars " (B IV). The place is also described as "a patch of briars "in a variant line of A."

31 "Cianciando e ridendo con Lorenzo come usati erano": "and with this young man they both would flatter " (A I), "and upon the salome they loaved and flattered " (A II), " and this young man they both did flatter" (A III). AV has simply "they both insisted"; A VI, " but little did he think of the bloody murder, a-hunting he did agree to go"; BI, "they asked him to go a-hunting." "These serpents' whine " is Keats's expression for it.

32 "Avenne una notte, che avendo costei molto Ipianto Lorenzo che non tornava, et essendosi alla fine piangendo addormentata, Lorenzo l'apparve nel sonno": "all on that night, while she lay sleeping" (A I), "one night, while she was lying sleeping" (A II), "all on that night as she lay mourning" (A III), "next morning she was silent, weeping" (A IV), "while she lie on her bedside slumbering" (AV), "as she lay dreaming on her pillow" (BI), "then to bed this fair maid went, lamenting for her own true love; she dreamt" (BTI), "she went to bed crying and lamenting, lamenting for herheart's delight; she slept, she dreamed" (B III), "she went to bed the same night after, she went to bed immediately, she dreamt" (BIV). AVI has lost this step in the story.

33. "Pallido e tutto rabbuffato, e con panni tutti stracciati e fracidi": "all wallowed o'er in gores of blood" (A I); practically the same language in A II, III, IV, V, B II, III; "covered all over in great drops of blood" (B IV); "dressed all in his bloody coat" (BI); lost in A VI.

34. "O Lisabetta, tu non mi fai altro che chiamare, e della mia lunga dimora t'attristi, e me con le tue lagrime fieramente accusi; . . . e . . . le disse che pit nol chiamasse ne l'aspettassi ": " Why do you weep, my pretty fair one? It is a folly you may pawn" (A IV): "My dear, leave off this crying, it is a folly for you to know" (A II); "My love, it's but a folly, for this is me that you may see" (AI); "Don't weep for me, my dearest jewel, don't weep for me, nor care nor pine" (BI); omitted in the other copies.

35. "E per cio salppi che io non posso pit ritornarci, per cio che l'ultimo di che tu mi vedesti i tuoi fratelli m'uccisono ": " For your two brothers killed me, rough and cruel" (AV), "For your two brothers killed me so cruel" (B I), "Your brothers both being rash and cruel-" (A I); lost in the other copies.

36. "E disegnatole il luogo dove sotterrato l'aveano, . . . disparve": "In such a valley you may find " (A I), " In such a place, love, you may me find " (A II), "Go over hills and lofty mountains, this lonesome place you may me find " (A IV), "In such a place you may me find" (B I), "You rise up early tomorrow morning, and straightway early to brake you know and there you find my body lying covered over in a gore of blood " (B II) ; lacking in the other copies.

37. "Alone, in the ballad; in Boccaccio, attended by a servant who has been her confidante. Keats makes this servant an old nurse, a figure for which he has a romantic predilection (cf. The Eve of S. Agnes); and Sachs, in his "tragedi," elaborates her into a veritable Kupplerin.

38. Since the ballad does not use the pot of ibasil motive, the plots diverge from this point. In the Decameron the action at the grave  is brief and reserved. Finding that she cannot take with her the whole body, she quickly cuts off the head, wraps it in a napkin, reinters the trunk, and returns to her chamber, where "sopra essa (the head) lungamente e amaramente pilanse, tanto che tutta con le sue lagrime la lav6, miille ,basci dandole in ogni parte." In the ballad the passion is acted over the body in the "lonesome valley," the "brake," 'the "bramble briar." Yet the action is much the same. "His pretty cheeks with blood 'were dyed, His lips were salt as any brine; She kissed them over and over, a-crying, 'You dearest bosom friend of mine,'" (A I), and practically the same language in AIII-V; "Kissing on her bended knees" (AII); "She kissed his cold, cold chin a-crying: 'You are the daughter's dearest dear'" (A VI); " She took her handkerchief out of her pocket For to wipe his eyes for he could not see" (B III); " She took her handkerchief from her pocket And wiped his eyes though he was blind, Because he was some true lover, Some true lover a friend of mine" (B II), and similarly in B IV. The "handkerchief" suggests the asciugatojo in which Lisabetta carried home the head and the bel drapo in which she afterwards wrapt it for burial.

39. A I, II, IV, V, VI, B I, III, IV; adding "And we no more of him could find " A II, " And never more we could him find " A IV, " No more of him it's could we find" A V, "No more of him we could not see" B I, "And what became of him we do not know" B IV, or ominously, "His face you never more shall see" A I, "And his fair face you shall see no more" A VI, " We've a-left him behind where no man can find" B III.

40. "She seems " in A I must be a corruption, due to misunderstanding, of "you seem."

41 One has already been considered, Note 28.

42. "Sie riten ausz zu dem stat thor, In masz, zu suchen wildes spor," H. S. II (see below).

43. "With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress," stz. xxIv. 2

44 See above, Note 19.

45 I number the versions for convenience of reference:

   H. S. I. Historia. Eim kleglich geschichte von zweyen liebhabenden. Der ermort Lorenz (Hans Sachs herausg. voI A. von Keller,   II, pp. 216 ff.). 256 lines, in four-beat couplets. "Der spruch der ist mein erst gedicht, Des ich spriichweiss hab zu gericht. Anno salutis 1515, am 7 tag April,is."

   H. S. II. Die Lisabeta mit irem Lorenzo. In der silberweis Hans Sachsen (Samtl. Fabeln und Schwdnke von Hans Sachs herausg. von E. Goetze und Carl Drescher, III, pp. 9 ff.). Fifteen 18-line stanzas of rather elaborate versification.
"Anno salutis 1519."

   H. S. III. Ein trawrige tragedi mit sieben personen zu spielen, von der Lisabetha, eines kauffherm tochter, und hat fiinff actus (Keller, viIn, pp. 356ff.). "Anno salutis 1546 (read 1545) jar, am letzten tag December."

   H. S. IV. Der erm6rt Lorenz. In dem schwarzen tone H. Vogel (Goetze u. Drescher, Iv, pp. 400 ff.). Three stanzas of 20 lines each. "Anno salutis 1548, am 23 tag Julii."

A fifth rendering, anonymous, "im rosenton H. Sachsen," found in a Weimar MS. and dated 1549, was ascribed to Hans Sachs by J. Bolte in his edition of Montanus' Schwankbiioher in 1899 (p. 577).

This has not been accessible to me; but as it has not been included in the Goetze u. Drescher edition, of which the latest instalment (1913) gives the mastersongs down to a date considerably later than 1549, and in which Bolte is a collaborator, I presume the ascription has been given up.

46. "In Cento Novella ich las" (I, 1); "ich lase In cento novella" (1i, 3 f.) ; "Wie die Bocatius beschrieb" (III, 5); "Peschreibt Pocatius mit Peschaide" (iv, 58). The "Cento Novella " is SteinhOwel's translation of the Deoameron.

47 Hans Sachs herausg. von Keller u. Goetze, xxv, p. 206.

48 Printed at Ulm before 1500. Available in A. von Keller's reprint, Stuttgart, 1860.

49 Doch vergasz er seins schwertz.
. . . .
Nun umb den ersten schlafe
Lorentzo die zeit drafe,
Kham stil und pracht sein wafe,
Dadurch er wiurt befrit. H. S., II

50 This answer, natural as it is, is found nowhere else. Keats here follows Boccaccio. In The Constant Farmer's Son the brothers tell her that her lover has fallen in love with another girl-- a similarly obvious answer, which however is found only in the stall ballad.

51. Simply " disegnatole il luogo dove sotterrato 'aveano."

52 Keats, with the romantic artist's love of handscape, has enlarged and particularized:

So these two hrothers and their murdered man
Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream
Gurgles through straiten'd banks, and still doth fan
Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream
Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan
The brothers' faces in the ford did seem,
Lorenzo's flush with love.-- They passed the water,
Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.
There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,
There in that forest did his great love cease.

Later the ghost describes his burial place--not without reminiscences from Coleridge's Osorio:

Red whortleberries droop above my head,
And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed
Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
Comes from beyond the river to my bed.

Next morning Isabella and the old nurse "creep along the river side" and into the forest until

The evening came,
And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed;
The flint was there, the berries at his head.

53. It may be pointed out, merely as a curious coincidence, that Keats (stz. xxxvI) describes the ghost's voice as sounding "like
hoarse night winds sepulchral briars among."

54. "Drawn probably from German popular poetry. Mr. Phillips Barry reminds me of the slaying of Siegfried by Hagen as he stoops to drink from a spring under a linden tree:

Do viel in die bluomen der Kriemhilde man:
Das bluot von sinen wunden sach man vaste gan.
. . . .
Die bluomen allenthalben von bluote waren naz.
      Nibelungenlied, xvI, 74, 86 (ed. Zarncke).

55. Except the hunting party (see Note 42), which is an interpretation of "a diletto" too natural to need accounting for.
 
56. The head of a man at once loved and hated. But wild and folklike as this vision is, and whencesoever Heine may have got it, we should remember that as we have it it is the work of a modern romantic poet, with all the bitter-sweet imagination of his kind.

57.  The High History of the Holy Oraatl, transl. by Sebastian Evans ('Temple Classics), I, pp. 40 ff.

58. The Green Knight's head is, of course, a magic head, like that of the elf-knighllt in certain Continental forms of the story of Isabel and the Elf-Knight (see below, Note 60). The two heads in Perlesvaus turn out (High History etc., I, p. 127) to be merely symbols of Adam and Eve, the "old law" or dispensation.

59 W. P. Ker, On the History of the Ballads, 1910, p. 25.

60. I n certain Dutch, Flemish, and German forms of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight (see the preface and notes to this ballad in Child's collection) the elf-knight's head is cut off and speaks thereafter, asking to be rubbed with "salve ' or "maidens-grease" as a means of restoring it to life; and in the Dutch and Flemish versions the girl carries it in her lap and shows it to the elf-knight's mother. It is of course a magic head. The only mention I find in English ballads of heads preserved is when Sir Andrew Barton, after a fight with the Portuguese, "salted thirty of their heads, And sent them home to eate with breade" (Child, iv, p. 504)--a far cry indeed from poor Lisabetta and her pot of basil!

61. It is remarkable how little English ballads owe to the romances of the Arthurian cycle. Of the 305 ballads in Child only two, Nos. 29 and 31, are drawn from Arthurian romance. Beyond these the ballads show only a name now and then drawn from the "matter of Britain." No. 30, King Arthur and King Cornwall, represents one of the stories of the Charlemagne cycle.

62 See above, page 336.

63 There is one ballad in Child's collection, Lady Diamond (No. 269), which is certainly drawn from Boccaccio and which may seemto contradict my generalizations about the ballad temper. But I do not think it does. It is the story of Guiscardo and Ghismonda (Decameron, iv, 1), perhaps the most famous and most often repeated, in both literary and popular form, of all Boccaccio's tales. Tancred, Ghismonda's father, has Guiscardo killed and his heart served up to Ghismonda in a golden cup. Ghismonda washes it with her tears, pours over it a decoction of poisonous herbs which she has prepared for the purpose, drains the cup (these last two items are omitted in the ballad), and dies. The notion of making a woman eat the heart of her lover (the heart is actually eaten in another form of the same story, Decameron, Iv, ix), which has its roots very far back in primitive magic, belongs in just that category of violent horror which appeals to vulgar (or shall I say popular?) sentiment. Clouston. Popular Tales, ii, p. 191, cites an eighteenth-century chapbook in which the theme is curiously modernized, the heroine being "one Madam Butler, a young Gentlewoman and a great Heiress, at Hackney Boarding School." Boccaccio himself seems to have felt the difference in quality between the two motives; his Ghismonda is a regal nature, a philosophical Cleopatra who plans her acts and in a long speech before her death justifies them, and convinces her father that his behavior is illogical, while Lisabetta weeps her life away in tender and silent seclusion over her beloved grasta.

How the popular ballad handles such a situation as that of Lisabetta when she finds her lover's body is shown in The Braes o Yarrow, which, as we have already seen, bears in some respects a decided analogy to Boccaccio's story, tho there is no reason to suppose it derived therefrom. When the lady finds her true love lying slain upon the Braes of Yarrow, she swoons thrice upon his breast (A), kisses his mouth (A, G, M), cheek (E), lips (F, H, I, L), takes him in her two arms and kisses him " thorough " (I), combs his hair (A, E, F, G, H, I, L, M), drinks the blood that runs from his wounds (E, F, G, M), bathes his wounds with tears (I), washes him in the wellstrand and dries him with the holland (J, L), and then, tying her long hair around his neck (?A), waist (B, D, Q, R), or hand (C), or his long hair around her waist (J) or to her horse's mane (K), drags the body home, where, refusing her father's consolation (B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M), she dies. Some of these manifestations of the girl's love and grief are much the same as in The Bramble Briar, which however does not descend to the grotesquerie of towing the body home by the hair. The difference in emotional quality between this grotesquerie and the pathos of LisaJbetta's behavior needs no comment.

64 An Irish version reported in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, II, p. 285, has retained this feature but has lost pretty much everything else of the original ballad. One of the versions in Campbell and Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians has a trace of the old ending.

65. E.g., 'Pretty Polly' B, Journal of Amer. Folk-Lore, xx, p. 263; 'Pretty Polly' in Miss Wyman's Lonesome Tunes. The text of this ballad in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians retains the old ending.

66. So far as I have been able to learn no source for this story has been alleged beyond the song from which Boccaccio here quotes. T. Cannizzaro's book, II Lamento di Lisabetta da Messina e la Leggenda dal Vaso di Basilico, Messina, 1902, I have not been able to consult.

67. It is somewhat surprising, in the light of this remark of Boccaccio's, that the notion of a "lost romance " from which he quoted the two lines should have been so widely accepted. It was first put forth, apparently, by Du Moril in his article on the sources of the Decameron (Histoire de la I'oesie Scandinave, Paris, 1839, p. 349); and as late as 1886 Child wrote, in a note to the preface to Clerk Saunders (Engl. and Scot. Pop. Ballads, II, p. 156), that "there was a ballad in Boccaccio's time (of which he cites the first two lines), on the story of G. iv, N. 5, of the Decamerone; a tale in which three brothers kill their sister's lover, and bury the body in a solitary place, and his ghost appears and informs the sister of what had happened." Du Meril knew or knew of the song as it was printed in the Canzoni a Ballo of 1568, which he conceived to be a making over of the original ballad. Fanfani printed the song as he found it in the Laurentian MS. (14th cent.) in his 1857 edition of the Decameron. But quite apart from 'this evidence that the song Boccaccio refers to was essentially the same as that printed in the Canzoni a Ballo, it is quite apparent from Boccaccio's own words that the canzone did not tell the story. If it had done so, why should the ladies, who had heard it sung " assai volte," still have been unable, in spite of their questionings, to learn "qual si fosse la cagione per che fosse stata fatta?"

68.  Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali, nei Secoli XIII e XIV, Pisa, 1871, pp. 48ff.

69 There is an Englisli translation-not quite clear in one "important point, I tlink-by John Payne in H. Buxton Forman's Poetical Works of John Keats, Appendix X.

70 So Carducei's text; but in a note he prefers the reading salernitano, and Scherillo prints salernetano.

71 Or " did not guard it well by reason of the man I loved so much" --"ch' i' n'ebbi mala scorta dal messer cui tanto amai." Payne renders this "Yet kept one day, through him whom I adore, I'll ward upon my gear." Whatever meaning Payne may have attached to "through him whom I adore" the girl cannot be supposed to saythat by reason of her devotion to her dead lover she neglected the pot of basil in which was buried that lover's head. My friend and colleague Mr. Giuseppe Cherubini, to whom I submitted the question writes: "I would interpret lines 19-20 thus: 'I gave it very bad protection from the man I loved so much-I didn't protect it from etc. . . . If the lines were to be taken in their innocent meaning I would translate them thus: 'It is only a short while that it was entrusted to me by the man' etc.,--but that would not go with what precedes (11. 5, 11, 18). I think your inference is right also from what seems to transpire from 11. 28-34."

72 This "uomo che m'e state tanto rio " is obviously (if we put Boccaccio's story out of our minds for a moment) the "messer cui tanto amai " of 1. 20.

73 The word grasta belongs to the Sicilian dialect. Note also that Boccaccio lays the scene of the story in Messina. The basil cult is especially strong in Sicily and southern Italy.

74 Quoted here from The English Physician, ed. of 1799, p. 28.

75 Botanologia Medica, Berlin, 1714, pp. 116 ff.

76 Mythologie des Plantes, Paris, 1878-1882, II, pp. 35 ff.

77. Apparently because it would imply that she had " lost her basil."

78. Richard Folkard, Plant Lore, p. 146. Unfortunately Folkard does not give his authorities.

79 E. Rolland, Flore Populaire de la France, Ix (1912), p. 40.

80 It is characteristic of folk-lore, and especially of the folk-lore of plants, that the same idea should be attached to various species; as de Gubernatis says (II, 91): 'Ces confusions sont tres frequentes dans la nomenclature botanique, ot le meme nom a etA attribue a une foule de plantes differentes." J. B. Porta in his Natural Magic (French edition of 1571, p. 201, quoting Martial-by mistake, as Mr. Phillips Barry points out to me, for Pliny, Hist. Nat., xIx, p. 57) says that if basil is planted repeatedly it turns into wild thyme and then into cresson or water-mint. What Pliny wrote was: " Namque et ocium senecta degenerat in serpyllum, et sisymbrium in calamintam."

81 Quoted in Littre s. v. marjolaine. The whole passage (Aresta Amorum, Paris, 1555, p. 101) runs: "ainsi qu'il estoit sur les rues pour aller la nuict resueiller les potz de marioleine, et planter le may deuant l'huys d'une moult gracieuse dame." The Aresta is a curiously pedantic collection, in French and Latin, of decisions in the court of love.

82 Flore Populaire, Lx, p. 29. Rolland adds: "C'est la rime qui a amene l'id'e"; but in the light of the folk notions here assembled this is an inadequate explanation.

83. Ibid., p. 34.

84. How much of this particular symbolism is an inheritance from ancient religion, magic, and medicine and how much is due merely to delight in the fragrance of these herbs-how much indeed of the ritual and magic attributes were derived in the first place from their actual physical properties-is a problem in folk-psychology which fortunately we need not here attempt to solve.

85. Sharp, Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 110; also in his One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 34. His text is from Somerset, where he says he has taken down twenty4four versions of "this dual song," i. e., Sprig of Thyme and Seeds of Love, which run into one another and are commonly held to be one song, tho Mr. Sharp undertakes to distinguish them. See also Sussex versions, J. F. S. S., I, pp. 86, 210; and a fragment from Nottinghamshire, J. F. S. S., II, p. 288, where Kidson quotes a version printed in A. Campbell's Albyn's Anthology in 1816, beginning:

O, once my thyme was young,
It flourished night and day,
But by chance -there came a false young man
And he stole my thyme away.

86 Rue vies with the labiates as a simple in the number and contrariety of its virtues. It has been famous as an antitoxin since the time of Mithridates; it was a favorite prophylactic against the plague; Porta in his Natwral Magic (ed. of 1571, p. 18b) says of it what he and others say of basil, that it thrives upon abuse; and he adds (p.1321) that it is of use "pour refroidir le desir de luxure" and (p. 133b) to procure abortion. Zorn (Bot. Med., 1714, p. 589) quotes the 'Salernitani' as nauthority for the statement, that "ruta viris minuit Venerem mulierilbus addit "-which affords a sufficient commentary, quite apart from the English word-play (rue = repent), upon its appearance in The Sprig of Thyme.

87 Cf. The Seeds of Love (Sharp, One Hundred Engl. Folk Songs, No. 33). The imagery varies. Waly Waly (ibid., No. 39) has this:

I thrust my hand into one soft bush,
Thinking the sweetest flower to find.
I pricked my finger to the bone,
And left the sweetest flower behind.

A copy of Seeds of Love printed by Nappey of York (Harv. Libr. 25242.17, II, p. 204) has:

I'll get me a posey of hyssop no other flower I'll touch
That all the world may see I lov'd one flower too much
I lock'd my garden gate and resolv'd to keep the key
But a young man came a courting to me and stole my heart away.

The Wheel of Fortune, printed by Stephenson, Gateshead, (ibid., I, p. 111), has:

He has spoiled all my good behaviour,
And broke my fountain against my will.

  * * * * *

You are the man that broke my fountain,
But not the man that shall break my heart.

Nappey's print of The Sprig of Thyme (ibid., n, p. 204, on the same sheet with Seeds of Love) has this:

But now my old thyme is dead,
I've got no room for any new,
For in that place where my old thyme grew,
Its run to a running running rue.
But I'll put a stop to that running running rue,
And plant a fair oak tree,
Stand up you fair oak tree,
And do not wither and die,
For I'll prove as true to the lad that I love
As the stars prove true to the sky.

The oak tree appears also in a Sussex version of Seeds of Love, J. F. S. S. I, p. 210.

The folk fancy, which eschews or ignores the more dignified types of figurative expression-simile, decorative metaphor, personification, apostrophe-- is by no means averse to a certain kind of wit, especially in dealing with erotic themes. "Old fashioned love," says Donne, catches men "riddlingly." Witness the riddle ballads at the beginning of Child's collection, and such pieces as Crow and Pie (Child, No. 111) and The Nightingale. Nor is its use in ballads restricted to those of a ribald or mocking temper. There are few more tragic ballads than that which takes its title from the image of the sheath and knife (Child, No. 16).

88. If a written source must be assigned, it may be found in an author with whom Boccaccio was thoroly familiar. The reason given for Dido's flight from Tyre (AEneid, I, 343 ff.) is essentially the same story. Dido's husband is treacherously slain before the altar by heravaricious brother, who " factum . . . diu celavit et aegram multa malus simulans vana spe lusit amantem," until at last her husband's ghost, " ora modis attollens pallida miris," comes to her in a dream, reveals the crime and tells her of a great treasure hidden in the ground by means of which she may establish a new state in Africa for the story is here raised to a political and dynastic level.

89 Yet in which the murder-and-ghost story is separable, and at the demand of vulgar ballad taste is separated, with the marks of Boccaccio's handling still strong upon it, in The Bramble Briar.

90 See Note 67.

91 De Gubernatis has indeed a quite different idea of the antecedents of the basil story. Getting together divers legends, Indian, Greek, Italian, Russian, Roumanian, Silesian, Bavarian, in which some plant or flower--basil, corn-flower, chicory-is said to be a maiden transformed by longing for a lost or rejected lover, or the lover himself so transformed, he interprets them all as forms of the sun myth, coming from India thru Greece and Byzantium to Slavic and Western Europe. See Mythologie des Plantes s. vv. basiie, bluet, chicoree, tulasi. Collectively the evidence is imposing, and makes it highly probable that somewhere in the backward and abysm of folk fancy such a notion attached to the cult of basil. The folklore of any given object is commonly an accretion of many elements, frequently incongruous and frequently no longer clearly distinguishable. But that the Sicilian song as we have it and as it was current in the fourteenth century was not a lament for the loss of a lover's head buried in a flower pot, or for a lover transformed into a flower, the text itself bears witness.

92 Printed in the J. F. S. S., I, p. 160; also, from a stall ballad in the British Museum (without the printer's name) in Sew. Rev., xix, p. 222.

93 In Catnach's print it is directed to be sung to the tune of Young Edwin in the Lowlands, which could hardly be used for The Bramble Briar. Each stanza after the first closes with the words " constant farmer's son," constituting a refrain. There is no trace of a refrain in The Bramble Briar.

94 All these changes are in the direction of fitting the story into the English life and temper.

95. So I infer from the fact that he describes his place of business sometimes as "near the Coburg Theatre" and sometimes as "near the Victoria Theatre." The Royal Coburg Theatre became the Victoria Theatre in 1833. See Besant's London South of the Thames, 1912, p. 83. But since the ballad was also printed by Catnach, who
went out of business in 1839, it is perhaps more likely that Catnach
was the first printer of it.

96 Harvard Library 25242.2, p. 258. This collection has about three score ballads with Taylor's imprint, very many of them with the name of the "writer" affixed-a procedure not customary among nineteenth-century London ballad printers. Taylor's "writers" or purveyors of copy were George Brown and John Morgan, whose names appear with about equal frequency on his prints. According to a writer in the National Review, xIII (1861), p. 409, John Morgan at least was a real person; and no doubt George Brown was too.

97 See Kittredge's note, J. A. F-L., xxix, p. 169.

98 Note 14.

99 In his Tragical Tales, 1587; pp. 183 ff. of the Edinburgh reprint of 1837.
100 The Decamreron . . translated into English Anno 1620 (Tudor Translations), 1909, I, p. cxxiv.
101 Those of 1587, 1620, 1684, 1820, 1822.
102 E. g. Kitty Kline (J. A. F-L., xxii, p. 240), or The False True Lover and many other accretions of ballad detritus in the collection of the Missouri Folk-Lore Society.
103 One of our versions, B IV, is recorded from the singing of English gypsies; and it is a tempting guess that gypsies have been the carriers of this ballad both in England and America (a number of gypsies, most of them bearing good Scotch names, were deported from Glasgow to America in 1715; see Journ. of the Gypsy Lore Soc., o. s., I, p. 61). Besides their trades of fortune-telling, tinkering, and horse-trading gypsies have plied that of entertainment in Great Britain since the sixteenth century, when they used annually to gather on the 'stanks' or marshes of Roslin and give "several plays" (F. H. Groome, Gypsy Folk Tales, p. 124, note). They are great tellers of folk tales. Miss Broadwood, J. F. S. Soc., v, p. 7, points out that four versions, so corrupt as to be partly unintelligible, of the old "carol" or homiletic known as The Moon Shines Bright or Christ Made a Trance were recorded from the singing of gypsies, and believes that the gypsies in their wanderings "had probably passed on a distortion of the text to one another." These distortions are in kind remarkably like those found in The Bramble Briar. On the other hand, there is no evidence that any of our American versions are associated with gypsies, and Miss Broadwood traces her version (B I) thru three generations of what seems unimpeachable Hertfordshire stock.

104 The murder of Gus Weeks and his wife and children by two cattlemen, George and Bill Taylor, in Linn County in 1894. See A Study in Contemporary Balladry, Mid-West Quarterly, I, pp. 162 ff. Wallace's ballad was taken up, remade, and sung by other local "carnival companies" until in a few years it was known and sung by the country people, in widely varying yet related forms, thru considerable parts of the state.

105 If he was blind or quite illiterate we must suppose that the story was read or told to him from the ibook, and that he then proceeded, like Caedmon, to regurgitate and chew the cud.

106 Its geographical range in America suggests that it came with the Scotch-Irish in the eighteenth century.

107 A striking instance is that of Young Charlotte, for which see Barry, William Carter, the Benson'town Homer, J. A. F-L., xxv,
pp. 156 ff.

108 Robert Jones, a blind fiddler who made his rounds in Missouri a few years ago, sold a "Comic and Sentimental Songster " containing one piece of his own composition and a miscellany of popular favorites. It bore the announcement that "If anyone should desire a book they can obtain it by sending their name and post office address with ten cents in silver to the postmaster at "-Dexter, Missouri, in one copy that I have seen; Hillman, Indiana, in another. Blind Jasper Kinder and his wife similarly sold a book of the songs that they sang in Howell County. Songs so learned pass of course into the learner's repertory of song. I have a copy of McAfee's Confession, words and air, sent me in 1912 by Miss Colquitt Newell from Farmington, Missouri. The tune she took down from the singing of a friend, Mr. C-- ; the words she copied from a "book of ballads and songs some new, some old, . . bought by him from a blind man selling them thru that town about ten years ago. He learned several tunes for different songs in the book from this blind man, who would sing them from the-street corners." The procedure has not changed, apparently, since the time of Autolyus and the Barnes family (cf. Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p. 5).

109 Most of Grundtvig's great collection of Danish ballads is drawn from Ms. ballad-books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Shirburne Ballads is such a collection made (from printed ballads) in England in Elizabeth's time; Percy's famous Folio MS. is another made some half-century later.