Bluegrass Messengers

The English Riddle ballads
by Susan Edmunds

[This is an excerpt from Susan Edmunds, (1985) The English riddle ballads, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7574/

Some of the old English letter characters have not reprinted properly as they were hand drawn. I've corrected minor spelling errors.

At the end I've added Appendix A; Description of Texts.

Several versions are not presented here; 1) The Michigan fragment (1914) 2) Horton Barker's 1941 version that is taken from or learned with Richard Chase; 3) Estep's Kentucky version, Roberts 1978; 4)  Drain's OK version and 5) Nancy Philley's Arkansas (1963) version from Max Hunter collection. The Jury-text from Barry in 1929 was also not covered.

R. Matteson 2014]

Chapter Two: Riddles Wisely Expounded

Although texts of this ballad are few in number, they span six centuries with a remarkable constancy, from the manuscript text, 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo', (i), written in about 1450 and possibly older than that date, to the American version, 'Nine Questions', (xx) collected recently in Virginia. Although predominantly English, the ballad is known in Scotland and there is evidence that it has been known in Northern Ireland ^[1]; the American tradition, which is particularly strong in Virginia, took over from the English in the twentieth century and has been largely responsible for the ballad's survival to the present. (See Appendix A).

  'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' (i).

The text of 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' appears in a manuscript of mixed Latin and English 'wisdom literature' in prose and verse, interspersed with grammatical exercises and business records, in the hand of one Walter Pollard of Plymouth, dating from the middle to the end of the fifteenth century; Child states the probable date of the ballad verses as soon after 1445, when Walter Pollard acquired the manuscript. Little is known about Pollard, except that he was one of a series of Pollards who owned property and were connected with the export and import trades, and who were sometimes mayors and Members of Parliament, from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth.

The piece is related to the other literary items in its didactic nature and also in its riddling content, for several of the other items are termed 'enigmata', and one at least is a popular riddle, which appears in Latin and partially in English. It occurs also in the Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.l, in full English translation:

I saw thre hedles playen at a ball;
On hanles man served hem all;
Whyll thre mouthles men lay and low,
Thre legles away hem drow. ^[2]

Riddles were evidently used for religious purposes as well as secular entertainment: Robbins prints four paradoxical lines from the Bodley MS. Laud Misc. 108, which use a similar technique to that of 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' in pressing beyond physical possibilities to express religious truths:

Byhalde merveylis: a mayde ys moder,
her sane her fader ys and broder.
lyfe fa3t with dete
Mos te hi) was lowe:
and depe is slayne;
he stype agayne. ^[3]

A similar example is the paradox lyric, 1A god and yet a man!, from the Bodleian MS.Rawlinson B JJ2, which presents the four central Christian paradoxes: the god who is a man; the virgin who is a mother; the god who dies; the dead man who lives. The final stanza of the lyric explains how to deal with these paradoxes:

Gods truth itselfe doth teach it,
Mans witt senckis too farr vnder
By reasons power to reach it.
Beleeve and leave to wonder. ^[4]

Riddles were also incorporated into the popular religious exempla: the life of St. Andrew, for example, in Caxton's Golden Legend, includes an episode which is close in substance to 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' and its later developments. The Devil, in disguise as a beautiful young woman, seeks refuge with a Bishop from the threat of a forced marriage, and enters into a riddling dialogue with St.Andrew, who is in the disguise of a pilgrim at the Bishop's door. The three riddles are as follows:

a. What is the greatest marvel God made in little space? - The diversity and excellence of the faces of men.
b. Is the earth higher than the heaven? - Where Christ's body is, in Heaven Imperial, he is higher than all the heaven.
c. How much space is there from the abyss to heaven? - St. Andrew here tells the Bishop to make the woman answer this herself, for she had just fallen from heaven to the abyss. ^[5]

The second of these riddles has as its root the popular riddle found in 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo': 'What is higher than the tree? - Heaven is higher than the tree'. The third riddle uses the same concept of name tabu that appears in later versions of the ballad, and in many other traditions, such as the Old Norse riddle contests, where recognition of identity is the final stroke of the game. ^[6] The same idea is found in Child J, 'The False Knight upon the Road'. (See Chapter 4).

Riddles of height and depth also occur in the tale of Andronicus in the English Gesta Romanorum, where Andronicus, Emperor of Rome, puts his knight Temecius on trial by asking him seven questions, on pain of death. Two of these are popular riddles:

How moche is fro heaven to helle?
-As moch as is a sighing of the heart.
How depe is pe see?
-As is cast of a stone. ^[7]

The latter of these is found in the English riddle collection, Demaundes Joyous, which was printed by Wynkyn de Warde in 1511. The former is reminiscent of the 'Inter Diabolus' question:

What (ys) longger pan ys pe way?
Loukynge ys longger than ys pe way.

The 'Inter Diabolus' text also has close affinities with the development of popular religious instruction, in the tradition which runs from the early sermon dialogues to the Franciscan lyrics found in collections such as John Grimestone' s Commonplace Book. (Grimestone's collection includes some religious paradox questions, but none coincide with the ballad riddles.) ^[8]

The tradition of sermon dialogues itself draws on numerous different sources. Adopting the classical method of using dialogue to expound a doctrine, a method which came to Western Europe in such works as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Augustine's Soliloquies and Gregory's Dialogues, the early medieval Church evolved its own, less dialectic traditions of catechisms and elucidaria, both as textbooks for the clergy, and as methods of popular teaching. As preaching methods developed, this technique was found to be useful for the pulpit too, and both Biblical characters and abstract personifications began to be used in sermon dialogues, such as the late thirteenth century Speculum Laicorum, which features Satan, the Virgin, Justice and Truth.^[9] This is the earliest English example of the use of the Devil in a sermon dialogue; there are several other examples, particularly in the continental traditions.^[10] The narrative framework of a confrontation between a devil and a human was a common one in the exemplum tradition, as is witnessed by the number of examples in the Gesta Romanorum. Chaucer and Dunbar both manipulated the form for comic purposes, Chaucer in his Friar's Tale and Dunbar in the piece known as 'How Dunbar was desired to be a Freir'; their willingness to do this indicates that the framework was a well-known one.^[11] The dramatic situation of such a confrontation may even have been regarded as an actual possibility, as it is described in the writings of Richard Rolle. Rolle recounts how a young girl appeared to tempt him to sinfulness; he assumed that she was a devil in disguise, and when he raised an outcry, she, not surprisingly, disappeared, thus strengthening his conviction that she had been a supernatural being.^[12]  The motif of a devil tempting a mortal in the guise of a lover, however, is more commonly found in the secular traditions: it appears, for example, in the ballad 'James Harris' (Child 243) and in 'The Laird of Wariston' (Child 194A).

Meanwhile, outside the churches, the minstrels were also developing a dialogue tradition. E. K. Chambers traces minstrel items like the thirteenth century Harrowing of Hell back to French ancestors: / the debat, the pastourelle and the chanson  personnages.^[13] By the thirteenth century, he concludes, the dialogue was 'part of the minstrel's regular stock in trade'. Peter Dronke traces the dialogue tradition further back, to the eleventh century, relating it to the dance-songs in which a lover woos a girl. ^[14] The minstrel dialogue which comes closest to 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' in substance is the fourteenth century 'De Clerico et Puella' (Harley 2253), with its simplified exchange between two people, resolved by what is presumably a recognition motif, similar to the recognition motifs in several ballads such as 'Gil Brenton' (Child 5) ^[15]. However, the courtly love setting of the minstrel dialogue places it far apart from the earthy, yet austere, 'Inter Diabolus'. The only obvious stylistic link between the text and the wider minstrel tradition is the opening announcement:

Wol ye here a wonder thynge
Betweixte a mayd and de foule fende?

Commands, or entreaties, to listen, were common introductions to minstrel romances ^[16]. A similar petition is found in the earliest text of 'The King and the Barker', which Child did not consider to be a ballad:

Well yow yere a god borde to make you lawhe all. ^[17]

Thus, the text of 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' had antecedents, though no close analogues, in both the secular and clerical traditions, indicating that at this time there was considerable mixing of the two. G. R. Owst describes preachers who moved outside the churches to act as minstrels, in an attempt to win popular attention, and courtly traditions were also on the move: Peter Dronke writes that

     The songs performed for a clerical and a noble audience shade off almost imperceptibly into the songs performed for a popular one, and popular songs themselves continually absorb the influence of more sophisticated art-songs. ^[18]

Franciscan methods of preaching frequently mixed popular and liturgical material: several carols are included amongst sermon notes, and some were definitely composed by friars, such as William Herebert and James Ryman. Some manuscripts of lyrics are known to have come from Franciscan or Dominican houses, such as Trinity Cambridge 323, which is probably from the Dominican house at Worcester ^[19], and the Franciscan John Grimestone's Commonplace Book ^[20] which contains several dialogues in the vernacular, such as the 'Debate between the heart and the eye'. Conversely, minstrels were by no means confined to secular material, and many minstrel pieces open and close with prayers, such as the lay Emare. ^[21]

Elizabeth Merrill bases her discussion of the English medieval dialogue on the distinction she sees in the Old English Solomon and Saturn between the first half, which is didactic and expository, and the second half, which develops into 'a Teutonic War of Wit' ^[22]. She describes these two as separate traditions deriving on the one hand from Ciceronian dialogue, leading to medieval catechism, and on the other from a combination of a 'native love of verbal contest' and the type of conflict dialogue found in Prudentius, and leading to the medieval debate poems such as The Owl and the Nightingale. The 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' dialogue has something in common with both these developing lines. In form, it is most like a catechism, showing the same curious combination of scriptural teaching and proverbial lore that is seen in the dialogue Adrian and Ritheus.^[23] In its narrative setting, it bears a strong resemblance to the midfourteenth century 'Dispitison bitwene a god man and de devel'.^[24]

  This is written in a combination of couplets and doggerel. Its narrative opening takes a similar stance to that of 'Inter Diabolus': in an eight-line introduction, the minstrel gives his reasons for relating the dialogue, and finishes:

I wol yow telle, as I can,
How pe fend tempte a Mon.

The temptation element is also similar: as the Devil promises the Maid in 'Inter Diabolus', 'wyssedom y wolle teche the', so the Fiend in the 'Dispitison' tells the man:

I con more zen he prest,
And better i wol, forsode I-wys,
How men schulen come to blis,
And also more I con telle
Wherefore Men Schule go to helle. (lines 51-56)

Other similarities lie in the catechizing technique and in the use of a set number of questions and replies, for the Devil is questioning the man about the Seven Deadly Sins. Certain formulae are repeated, to emphasize the structure of the poem, such as the narrative couplet:

The gode Man understod
Pat pat pe tour seide was not good ..
(lines 99-100; 191-192; 332-333; 398-399, etc.)

Finally, the conclusion of the poem shows a similar triumph of the human in outwitting the Devil, as he blesses himself and commands the Devil back to Hell. The various traditions which lie behind the composition of 'Inter Diabol us et Virgo' , then, show a general movement away from, then back towards, the 'native love of verbal contests' of which Elizabeth Merrill writes. From the unsophisticated riddle tales in the exempla collections, the narrative idea of a verbal contest between Devil and innocent becomes more interwoven with complex forms and specific clerical purposes, but eventually becomes a part of the fifteenth century mingling of popular and religious traditions, regaining its 'native' flavour. From its inclusion in the sober Rawlinson D 328, the text of 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' seems to have been regarded, at least by Pollard, as an orthodox religious piece; it was perhaps the composition of a Friar. There is no indication that it was ever sung; none of the other items in the manuscript are songs. Nevertheless, the text evidently remained in circulation, very likely in popular circulation, through a minstrel medium, until the seventeenth century, when the dialogue met with the broadside tradition, and was fashioned into a ballad proper.

The Ballad Versions
From the earliest appearance of the sung ballad, in the seventeenth century broadsides, to the most recent traces of it in the present century, there has been a thin but more or less continuous flow of texts, appearing both in print and in the oral tradition; they are linked primarily by the sequence of riddles, which has remained surprisingly unchanged, while the narrative framework fluctuates and sometimes disappears entirely. The cumbersome broadside title, 'A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded', which was adopted by Child, bears little relation to the song itself, which is identified either by the character of the knight (especially in Scottish texts), or, in most American versions, by the title 'The Devil's Nine Questions', despite the fact that in most cases there are either eight of ten; nine was presumably felt to be a more suitably mystical number.

Broadside versions of the ballad, as Child indicates, appeared first in black-letter copies of the seventeenth century. The copy in the Euing collection was issued between 1658 and 1664, for Coles, Vere and Gilbertson in London; this was a period when many folksongs were beginning to find their way into the broadside trade.^[25]  The copies in the Wood and the Rawlinson collections were licensed in 1675 for Coles, Vere, Wright and Clark, forming part of a large body of 163 ballads and 33 chapbooks; John Clark, the new partner, was granted the sole right to license singers of ballads, by the Master of Revels, Charles Killigrew.^[26] William Thackeray also printed a number of traditional ballads at this time, including 'A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded' and 'King John and the Bishop'; in 1689 he issued a trade list which includes these two, among 301 ballads. The Pepys copy of the ballad has the imprint of Thackeray and two later partners, of about 1692, Elizabeth Millet and Alexander Milbourn. The Douce copy is Roman letter and belongs to the eighteenth century.

The tune to which the broadsides are directed to be sung, 'Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom', is first found in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy of 1719-20; Claude Simpson observes that it is badly barred, giving 'every evidence of being traditional and not an art product'. ^[27] Bronson goes further than this and suggests that, while the refrain and title of the ballad appear to have been inherited from a late Elizabethan pastoral ballad, the tune seems to be older still; he remarks on its similarity to plainsong, and cites an eleventh century analogue, the Sanctus from the Orbis Factor Mass.^[28] In his study of The Ballad as Song, he takes this tune as the root of a 'tune family' of twenty-seven members, some of which, like the Playford tune 'Goddesses', are very remote. Bronson gives no objective criteria for the selection of tunes for his families, and he does not seem to take into account the possibility that a phrase may be common to several tunes without these tunes being related to each other in any other way. A tune family can point to certain musical habits, often to vocal habits, but it can say little about the historical transmission of tunes, and can be misleading because of this. Thus the similarity between the Gregorian tune and the D'Urfey one does not help to date the tune, but only observes a similarity of musical habit between them. ^[29]

The tune, 'Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom' was used also in the play, 'The Highland Reel', by J. O'Keefe and William Shields, shortly after 1788 (see Bronson 1.2), with a new last line to the refrain, 'Twang Lang-o Tillo lang 'T 'lango dillo day' , which replaces the more Elizabethan 'Fa la la' reading of the broadsides. The tune, though recognizable as a relation of the one printed by D'Urfey, is more rigid, and more distinctly Scottish in rhythm, indicating that it was already identified as a Scottish tune, at least by the end of the eighteenth century. There are no other texts or tunes for this century, and the next evidence of the ballad is from the two Scottish texts in Motherwell's collection, (iv) and (v) in Appendix A, and the Cornish version (iii), all of which belong to the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

The two Scottish texts have no tunes; they might have been sung to the tune recorded in 'The Highland Reel', except for the last line, which has changed again from 'Twang Lang-o Tillo' to 'And ye may beguile a young thing sune'. The first refrain line, 'Lay the bent to the bonny broom', has become 'Sing the Gather/Claret banks, the bonnie broom' ^[30] in (iv); in (v) it remains the same. None of these refrain lines seem particularly appropriate to the ballad, and it seems most likely, as Bronson suggests, that the refrain came with the tune when the broadside was composed. The Scottish refrains (iv) and (v), with the reference to beguiling young things, suggest that the broom is referred to as a charm, as it is in the ballad 'The Broomfield Hill' (Child 43), where a girl strews broom flowers over a knight's head and thus sends him to sleep, escaping his amorous advances. Broom seems to have magical associations also in 'Tam Lin' (Child 39), where the fairy queen speaks from a broom bush. However, broom also has associations with love and courtship in a non-magical setting, as in the refrain of 'Leesome Brand' (Child 15B) and 'Sheath and Knife' (Child 16):

Ae lady has whispered the other,
The broom grows bonnie, the broom grows fair,
Lady Margaret's wi bairn to Sir Richard, her brother,
And we daur na gae doun to the broom nae mair.(16B)

'Going down to the broom' seems to be an equivalent of going to pick flowers in ballads of the 'Tam Lin' type, an action which preludes, and possibly deliberately invokes, the appearance of a lover. It would seem, that, like many other folk symbols, broom can be taken to have either magical or sexual connotations interchangeably. It may have originally had both, as it does in the thirteenth century lyric, 'Say me, Viit in the Brom', in which a woman asks a supernatural spirit of the broom how to
handle her husband:

'Say me, viit in the brom,
Teche me wou I sule don
That min hosebonde
Me louien wolde.'

'Holde thine tunke stille
And hawe al thine wille' ^[31]

This ambiguity extends to the 'Bent' of the broadside refrain, which Annie Gilchrist suggests is a corruption of 'bennet', or 'herb-bennet' (Herba Benedicta), a name of the common avens, which was supposed to ward off evil; Margaret Dean-Smith, however, suggests that the line is a sexual metaphor, ^[32] 'bent'  being in this case a rushlike grass. In the case of the ballad in question, this ambiguity is perfectly fitting, since an amorous advance is revealed in some cases to be an attack of the Devil.

Ambiguity as to the identity of the knight, and his intentions, began with the 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' text, where the fiend combines a threat - 'But fou now answery me,/Thu schalt for sope my leman be' - with a promise - 'Mayd, mote y thi leman be, /Wyssedom y wolle teche the'. Bronson suggests that this is an indication of an older text, worked over and influenced by the story of Christ's temptation in the wilderness, but the threat and the promise are not irreconcilable, and it is possible that both were always in the text together. The confusion arises only because the threat comes after the riddles, while the promise comes before them, so that the riddles appear to be a catechism and a part of the 'Wyssedom' promised by the fiend.

The broadside versions, in which the knight has no diabolic overtones at all, seem to be a divergence from the mainstream of the song's tradition, for in the texts which have no broadside influence, he is clearly a devil; the one exception to this is the fragment recorded in 1969 from Mrs. Gunn (xix), which contains only the riddles, but which Mrs. Gunn explained as 'a man trying to evade marrying a woman by asking her riddles'. The fragment seems in any case more likely to belong to the tradition of Child 46, 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship', in which the narrative situation, though still not that of Mrs. Gunn's explanation, does at least have a resemblance.

Since one of the Motherwell texts (v) also has no narrative context, it seems likely that the song circulated in Scotland in this form, purely as a riddle song, as well as in the longer ballad form. The variant from Davies Gilbert (iii), which belongs to the broadside-influenced tradition, has developed individual characteristics of its own. Some of these are explained by the mixing of the ballad with elements from 'The Twa Sisters' (Child 10), a confusion which is not confined to this text. Firstly, the tune, though recognizably related to the Mason tune (vi), which is similar to D'Urfey's (ii), is also very close to the tune of 'The Twa Sisters' (Bronson 10, Group B), which fits the opening line, 'There was a man lived in the West'. The similarity of this textual line with the opening of the broadside 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' ('There was a Lady in the North Country'), makes the borrowing of the musical line understandable, and the Mason text (vi), which shares this musical line, has borrowed the text as well ('There was a lady in the West'). The second confusion with 'The Twa Sisters' is in the refrain of the Davies Gilbert version (iii), which is found in two American texts of 'The Twa Sisters' (Bronson 10.91 and 10.92) , and also in several other ballads: 'The Cruel Brother' (Child 11); 'The Wife Wrapped in Wether Skin' (Child 277) and 'Babylon' (Child 14). The reason for the sharing of the refrain is clearly the motif of the three sisters, for 'The Wife Wrapped in Wether Skin' is the only ballad among the five in which this does not occur.

There seems always to have been confusion, among singers and collectors alike, as to whether the first line of this refrain ('Jennifer gentle and Rosemary') refers to the names of girls, or of herbs. The words under the music of Gilbert's version (iii), for example, are 'Juniper, gentle and rosemary', but he describes them himself as the names of the three sisters. Child suggests that 'gentle' is a corruption of 'gentian' but this seems unlikely; Annie Gilchrist suggests influence from street cries of 'Baum gentle' ^[33], which is slightly more plausible. The most obvious source, however, seems to be the medieval carol and lyric tradition. Versions of both 'The Cruel Brother' and 'Babylon' from the oral tradition contain the line, 'Gilly flower/ Gilliver, gentle and rosemary'. Assuming 'gentle' to be an adjective describing 'gilly flower', there remain the names of two plants which were used in religious and love lyrics, probably both of Marian origin. 'Gilofre' appears, for example, in Pearl ^[34] as one of the precious spice-plants among which the pearl falls; it appears also in the garden of Mirth in the Roman de la Rose^[35]. Rosemary was a common Marian comparison, for example in Dunbar's Rorate Celi Desuper, where the etymological make-up of the word is apparent:

For now is rissin the bricht day ster
Fro the ros Mary, flour of flouris ^[36]

The English word is derived from the Latin rosmarinus, meaning 'sea-dew,' but was assimilated to the vernacular as 'rosemary' by association with the Virgin. Thus it seems likely that the refrain 'Jennifer gentle and rosemary' is derived from a medieval refrain or burden, 'Gilofre gent and rosemary'. An analogous example is the ballad refrain, 'Hey wi the rose and the lindie, O', (Child 20 I), and its variants, which seems most likely to be derived from the medieval carols and lyrics which use the rose and the lily as Marian symbols ^[37]

The second line of Gilbert's refrain is bizarre - 'As the dew flies over the mulberry tree' - even if 'dew' is accepted as a dialect form 'dow' or 'dove'. Some singers have produced rationalizations to explain 'dew' such as the Motherwell 'Babylon' (Child 14A) - 'And the dew draps off the hyndberry tree' - and a Forfarshire version of 'The Cruel Brother' (Child 11E) - 'And the dew hangs i' the wood, gay ladie'. Others have evidently had the bird in mind: an Appalachian text of 'The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin', for example ^[38], gives the reading, 'As the dew flies over the green valley'. Doves have a popular association with courtship and love, from medieval times to the present^[39], and mulberry trees also have a tradition as marriage symbols, as Lady Gomme points out in her notes on the nursery rhyme game, 'Here we go round the mulberry bush'^[40]. There is a tradition that  Pyramus and Thisbe met under a white mulberry bush, which turned red from their blood.^[41] Thus the refrain line has a vague symbolic association with courtship.

The only other text from the nineteenth century is the Northumbrian version in Mason's collection, (vi) which came from the Mitford family. This also has individual elements, although the basic story-line and the tune identify it as a fairly close relation of the broadsides. The refrain 'Fa lang the dillo' is close to the Highland Reel tune (Bronson 1.2). The narrative framework is expanded and altered (see Appendix A), and the most significant difference between it and the broadside text is that the knight is clearly identified as the Devil, 'Old Nick', in stanza 6. The motive for the riddle sequence is therefore more confused than usual: the sisters have let the knight in and seated him on a chair, whereupon he begins asking questions, with the threat that if they fail to answer them, they will belong to him and be carried off. The riddles too are expanded and there is a whole new section of six riddles which are not found elsewhere (u). These riddles are all of a moral, didactic nature, with such subjects as truth, falsehood, and revenge; the sequence is therefore much closer to the medieval text than to any other modern version. However, learned knowledge of the 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' text is unlikely, since it was only published in 1898; an unbroken line of tradition seems equally unlikely, because of the polished and fanciful wording of the riddles, and because there is no evidence of them elsewhere. It seems most probably that the riddles were peculiar to the Mitford family tradition, based on an understanding of the crucial dramatic element of the ballad as being the evasion of a diabolic attack by the use of religious words and symbols. Most importantly, however, the Mason variant is the first indication that the broadside tradition of the three sisters and the knight was combined with the older tradition of the Devil attempting to carry off a girl.

The two traditions meet also in the next English text, 'The Knight', from the Upper Thames Valley (vii). Unfortunately, Alfred Williams, who collected the text, never had time to go back for the tunes, as he intended; it seems probably that the tune would have showed another link with 'The Twa Sisters', for the refrain is that of the most common of the contemporary 'Twa Sisters' texts (Bronson 10 Group B), 'Bow down, bow down, sweetheart, and a bonny lass . . . ' The text itself has lost the motif of the three sisters, but retains the character of the knight who knocks late at the door. Of all the texts which contain the Devil, this is the most dramatic, although the narrative is kept to a minimum; after the sinister loud knocking of the knight comes the threat:

If thou canst not answer me three times three
In ten thousand pieces I'll tear thee.

The riddles are nearer to the sequence in the Motherwell versions than to any of the broadside-influenced texts; significantly, they are the most common combination found in twentieth century American texts. The conclusion (E¹), in which the knight claps his wings and cries aloud, before flying away, 'a flame of fire', is likewise found only in Scottish and American versions. These two last English versions of the ballad, (vi) and {vii), which are geographically far apart, indicate that the broadside-influenced tradition, with the characters of the knight and the three sisters, met with the Devil tradition seen first in 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo'. It seems reasonable to assume that the latter tradition was already circulating as a folksong before it was made, somewhat incongruously, into a pastoral broadside ballad.

American Versions.
With the exception of (xix), all the remaining texts are from America, and seven of the thirteen are from Virginia. Three texts belong to the broadside tradition: firstly, the fragment (xv), which Robert P. Tristram Coffin remembered from the singing of his cousin during his childhood, is the fifth stanza, verbatim, of the broadside text. From the same state, comes a second precise record, through a more devious route; this is the text (xii), from Florence Mixer, which comes from two generations of family tradition, and which is an English translation of the German version of the ballad, which was in turn translated from the English broadside by Herder. The German text appears also in Goethe's Singspiel, Die Fischerin^[42] , of 1782. The English retranslation was by William Aytoun, printed in Blackwood's Magazine (LVII 173-6). The tune is not related to the D'Urfey tune and Bronson suggests that it is either 'mere sing-song', for the melody is very free and variable, or a relation of 'Newmill' from the Greig manuscripts. The third broadside-related text comes from Vermont (xvi), and shows another meeting of the ballad with 'The Twa Sisters' (Child 10), for the refrain, 'Bow down, bow down, your bow shall bend to me . . . ' is in the same group as the Wiltshire refrain (vii) and is regularly found in American 'Twa Sisters' texts; the opening stanza (B⁸) is also borrowed from the same ballad, suggesting a borrowing independent of the English text. The tune, though not close to any of the recorded tunes of Child 10, follows the same general contour as the tunes in Bronson's Group B (10.23- 60).

The rest of the American texts are very similar to each other in both words and music. The Devil is unambiguously a Devil, and threatens to carry the girl off to Hell; she has become in most cases 'the weaver's bonny'. Refrains are normally of the 'Sing ninety-nine and ninety' type; this is presumably inspired by the number of riddles, which in the 1923 Wiltshire text (vii) was 'three times three', and which is usually given in American texts as nine, although in most cases this is incorrect. The insistence on a multiple of three, which is in any case a favourite number of the oral tradition, is probably influenced by the many folktales in which three riddles are set and solved (Aarne-Thompson Type 875). The folk festival version of the ballad recorded by Richard Chase (xvii) has the refrain, 'And the crow flies over the white oak tree', which is presumably an improvisation, possibly by Chase himself, on the lines of 'the dew flies over the mulberry tree'. Another oddity is the extra stanza supplied by Mrs. Rill Martin in 1933 (viii B5), which is taken from the American versions of 'Sir Lionel' (Child 18) and the song, 'A Frog went a-courting' ^[43].

The devil went a-courting and he did ride,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety,
A sword and pistol by his side,
And you're the weaver's bonny.

The second alternative first stanza for (viii), supplied by Alfreda Peel, still from Virginia, is the only text of this type to feature the knight rather than the Devil; it shows that a text similar to the Wiltshire one (vii), where the bare elements of the broadside version remain but are dominated by the Devil's riddles motif, must have reached Virginia. The text from J. J. Niles (xi) includes one riddle from 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship' (Child 46); this is likely to by an individual oddity on Niles' part, as is the extra riddle, not found in any other texts, 'What thing round the whole world goes? - Air', which is probably derived from the riddle in Child 45, 'How long does it take to travel round the world? -A day, with the sun'.

It is most likely that the two stanzas recorded from Mrs. David Gunn in Caithness in 1969 ( xix), which contain only riddles, are from a text of Child 46 and not Child 1, since the same riddles occur in some Scottish texts of Child 46 (e.g.'The Laird o' Roslin's Daughter' in Ord's Bothy Songs and Ballads, Bronson 46.6) Otherwise, there are no British texts recorded after 1923.

Cantefable Versions.

A Jamaican cantefable in Walter Jekyll's collection is clearly derived from the broadside text of 'Riddles Wisely Expounded'.^[44] Entitled, 'The Three Sisters', it describes the three sisters living together and refusing to marry; Snake dresses himself as a man and is carried to the door, which is locked with an iron bar. He sings a verse:

   My eldest sister, will you open the door? (twice)
   Fair an' gandelow steel.

The youngest sister, described as 'old-witch', prevents her sister from doing so, and sings in reply,

   My door is bar with a scotran bar.

Snake asks all three in turn and finally the youngest sings,

  The Devil roguer than a woman-kind.

This annoys the Snake, who has now turned into a Devil. In an inversion of the riddle, he sings,

What is roguer than a woman-kind.

He then flies in to Hell, where he is chained 'until now.' The tune to the verses in the cantefable is not like any of the ballad tunes.

Two other American tales with verses, one sung, one chanted, are also close to the ballad, and probably derived from it, but may be regarded also as examples of the tale type in which a girl proves her worth by answering riddles or performing impossible tasks (Aarne-Thompson Type 875); such tales sometimes include riddles of the superlative kind, like those belonging to the ballad. 'The Bride of the Evil One' was recorded from a negro gardener in New Orleans, who came from Martinique via Louisiana. [45] Maritta, the bride, is a rich heiress who lives on a great plantation; her parents say her bridegroom must be seen from 10,000 miles away to be acceptable. The Devil equips himself with a coach of gold that answers this condition, and the two are married; at the end of a long journey in the coach, they reach a great hill, issuing clouds of smoke, and are greeted by an old hag, also married to the Devil. Maritta has still not realised the identity of her husband, and is enlightened by the hag, who helps her to escape, but she is pursued by the Devil, who asks her three questions. If she answers them wrongly, she will be taken back. The riddles are sung:

What is whiter than any snow?
What is deeper than any well?
What is greener than any grass?

Maritta answers correctly (Heaven; Hell; Poison) and the Devil stamps his feet, fills the house with smoke, and destroys the plantation before disappearing.

A similar story was recorded from Carter Young, aged seventy, who was born in North Carolina [46], entitled 'The Devil's Marriage'. A lady says she will not marry unless to a man dressed in gold. A man appears at a party held by her, answering this description, but the lady's young brother notices that he has a club foot, and he follows the couple as they travel to a house surrounded by smoke. The brother warns his sister that she is with the Devil, and they run back, but the next day, the Devil appears, asking for a woman called Mary Brown. An old witch answers him and chants a sequence of both riddles and solutions:

What is whiter, what is whiter, than any sheep down in General Cling Town ? - Snow
What is greener .... than any wheat growed in General Cling Town ? - Grass
What is bluer .... than anything down in General Cling Town ? - Sky
What is louder .... than any horns down in General Cling Town ? -Thunder.

The Devil claims her soul, but the witch throws her shoe at him and he takes that instead.

The Riddles.

Riddles of the superlative are common in many traditions, and several of those found in the ballad are also found independently and in folktales, though not usually with the same solutions.

Several German folksongs contain the riddles, 'What is greener than the clover? - grass' and 'What is whiter than snow? - milk'; some also have 'What is higher than God? - the Crown'. The fourteenth century Trougesmundlied, a dialogue between a traveller and his host, contains the first two of these; so do a Smith's greeting from 1745 and a medieval hunting song. ^[47] The modern riddle-song, 'Madchen, ich will dir was zu raten aufgeben', which is known all over Germany, often contains the clover and the snow riddles; the narrative framework of this song is not unlike that of the broadside 'Riddles Wisely Expounded'.
(A knight or rider gives a girl, who is usually of low birth, riddles which she must answer to be his bride).^[48]

The same riddles occur in Guild Kranzsingen, a tradition which began in the fifteenth century, in which a man must answer questions in order to gain the wreath, which is bestowed upon him by a woman.^[49] A sequence of superlative riddles, though none of them close to those of the ballad, is found in the Danish ballad of Svend Vonved.^[50] Riddles of the highest and the deepest are also found independently in the oral tradition, as is testified by several examples in Archer Taylor's riddle collection, English Riddles from Oral Tradition. [51] The closest links with the ballad, however, are with the German Marchen of the Clever Peasant Girl (Aarne-Thompson Type 875) and the Devil's Riddles (Type 812), where riddles of the swiftest, the softest, the sweetest, the longest and the broadest, the greenest, the best and the strongest are found, together with other superlative riddles. Jan de Vries has made a study of international variants of Type 875^[52], and has traced some of these riddles back to Slavic sources, in particular the riddle, 'What is the sweetest?', which has a variety of answers, from 'bread' through to 'Heavenly peace', this last being perhaps a Christianization of the earliest answer to the riddle, 'sleep'. The riddles, and the marchen, appear worldwide. Between them, the two narratives 812 and 875 span the ambiguity in 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' as to whether the man is a suitor or a tempting Devil. In Type 875, the Peasant Girl is married to a King after solving riddles or impossible tasks; in 812, a man is promised to the Devil unless he can solve riddles; he achieves this through trickery and the Devil is banished; there is a version of this in the Grimm collection (No. 125), 'The Grandmother'. It seems likely that these two tale types are the source of the ballad and of the ambiguity which is centered in the character of the knight.

Answers to the riddles are more variable than the questions, and seem to be more subject to locality and time. Several of the 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo' riddles do not appear in any other version; the 'sweeter than the nut' riddle, to which the answer is 'love' (m), may have some connection with the fable in the English Gesta Romanorum of the Ape and the nut. An ape throws away the whole nut, which is religion, because the bitter rind, which is the discipline of the Church, conceals the sweet kernel inside, which is spiritual bliss.^[53] The hunger riddle (c) also appears as a proverb, 'Hunger pierces stone walls', in sources from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, such as John Heywood's dialogue 'containing the nomber in effect of all the proverbes in the englishe tongue', of 1546, and Becan's Jewel of Joy, 1553, which contains the proverb, 'Hunger is sharper than the thorn'^[54]. The 'loukying' riddle (f) is glossed by Child to mean 'expectation, hope deferred', but the earliest evidence of this meaning for the word is 1513 (More's Richard III), and it is possible that the older meaning of pulling, from 'louken' to drag or pull, applies. The most variable of the answers is the 'greenest' (k, l); the most common answer is 'poison', and this may be arsenic, which is green in colour. The answer 'the grave' calls upon a traditional association of the colour with death, shown for example in 'The Cruel Mother' (Child 20), where one of the revenant children is clad in green, 'to shew that death
they had been in'. (Version H).

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO. (CHILD 1)

1. Sabine Baring-Gould, A Garland of Country Song (1895), pp. 42-3, notes that 'a curious North-Irish version of the ballad may be seen in the British Museum, Ulster Ballads (1162 k.6)'  This collection, which also contains a copy of Child 46, and which
Child knew, cannot now be traced.

2. Rossell Hope Robbins, Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (1955), p. 241.  There is no accepted solution for this riddle, but it bears resemblance to the popular weather riddles for 'snow' ('White Bird Featherless') and 'mist' ('Mouthless'), and may therefore be a description of a weather scene. Robbins believes the manuscript to be a minstrel's song book.

3. Ibid. p. 241.

4. Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (1939), p.120.

5. Jacobus de voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Caxton. Edited by F. S. Ellis, 1973, Vol. II pp. 94-109.

6. E.g. Vafprugnismal; in Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. G.Neckel, 1962, pp.45-55; and Hervararsaga ok Heireks, ed. Christopher Tolkien, 1960. There are numerous other examples of the name tabu in popular literature: Child (ESPB III p.498) cites many Nordic and Celtic items. Other examples of the name tabu in ballads are 'Earl Brand' (Child 7); 'The Hunting of the Cheviot' (Child 162) and 'Child Waters' (Child 63).

7. Sidney J. Herrtage, ed., The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, pp.65-7.

8. See Edward Wilson, A Descriptive Index of the English Lyrics in John of Grimestone's Preaching Book, Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series II, Oxford 1973).

9. Speculum Laicorum, ed. J.Welter (Picard, Paris 1914).

10. See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, Chapter 8, 'Sermon and Drama'.

11. Geoffrey Chaucer, 'The Friar's Tale', in F.N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer,- 2nd ed., pp.89-93. William Dunbar, 'How Dunbar was desired to be a Freir' in James Kinsley, ed., The Poems of William Dunbar, No. 55. Dunbar's devil, in disguise as St. Francis, disappears in a similar manner to that of the devil in later versions of Child 1, 'with stynk and fyrie smowk'.

12. Hope Emily Allen, The En lish Writings of Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole Oxford University Press, l9Jl), Introduction p.xxii,
13. Sir E.K.Chambers, The Medieval Stage, pp. 77 ff.
14. Peter Dronke, Medieval Lyrics, p.50.
15. Also in 'King Estmere 1 (Child 60); 'The New-Slain Knight' (26J) ;'Hind Horn' (17). 'De Clerico et Puella' in G.L. Brook, The Harley Lyrics (Manchester University Press, 1956) No.24.

16. E.g. Sir Launfal; The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell; Gamelyn: in Donald B.Sands, Middle
English Verse Romances, p.20J; J26; 156.
17. Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse, No. 4168.
lB. Dronke, op.cit., p.JO.
19. See Karl Reichl, Religiose Dichtung in Englischen Hochmittelalter (Mlinchener Universitats-Schriften, Philosophische Fakultat, Band I, Munchen 1973).

20. Wilson, A Descriptive Index (see note 8 above).

21. Thomas C.Rumble, The Breton La s in Middle English (University of Detroit, 1965 p.97: after a prayer to Jesus and Mary, the minstrel continues:

Menstralles that walken fer and wyde,
Her and ther in every a syde
In mony a dyverse londe,
Sholde, at her bygynnyng,
Speke of that ryghtwes kyng
That made both see and sonde.

See also Athelston; Sir Isumbras; Sir Gowther.

22. Elizabeth Merrill, The Dialogue in English Literature, p.20.

23. Adrian and Ritheus in J.M.Kemble, Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (London 1848)pp. 198, ff.

24. C. Horstmann, The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS, (E.E.T.S. 98, 1892) Part I, pp. 129-154.

25. Robert S.Thomson, 'The Development of the Broadside Ballad Trade and its influence upon the Transmission of English Folksongs' (1974) p.65.

26. Ibid., p.67.

27. Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music, pp. 431-2

28. Bertrand H.Bronson, The Ballad as Song, pp. 97 ff.

29. G.B. Chambers, Folkson -Plainson: A Study in Origins and Musical Relationships 2nd ed., Merlin Press, London 1972 p. : Chambers' study illuminates this similarity. He argues that plainsong was originally inspired by folksong, and cites some of the Church Fathers who observed peasant song and saw in it the spiritual possibilities that were developed in the plainsong chants. Augustine, for example, notes in his commentary to Psalm 32 the phenomenon he describes as 'Jubilatio':

Quid est in jubilatione canere ? Intelligere verbis explicare non posse quod canitur corde. Etenim ille qui cantant sive in messe sive in vinea, sive in aliquo opere ferventi, cum coeperint in verbis canticorum exultare laetitia, veluti impleti tant laetitia ut earn verbis et eunt in sonum jubilationis. Jubilus sonus quidem est significans cor pasturire quod dicere non potent.

(What does singing a jubilation mean ? It is the realisation that words cannot express the inner music of the heart. For those who sing in the harvest field, or vine-yard, or in work deeply occupying the attention, when they are overcome with joy at the words of the song, being filled with such exultation, the words fail to express their emotion, so, leaving the syllables of the words, they drop into vowel sounds - the vowel sounds signifiying that the heart is yearning to express what the tongue cannot utter.)

It is not clear whether Augustine observed this phenomenon in Italy or in Africa, or whether the joy he observed was really connected with the words, rather than the music, of the song; a similar enjoyment of the vowel sounds in singing can be observed in the Aberdeenshire ballad style, as demonstrated by Jeannie Robertson.

30. 'Cather' is possibly a corruption of the Aberdeenshire 'cat-heather'.

31. Cambridge Trinity Coll. MS. 323, f. 28 (see note 19 above). The lyric also appears in British Museum Add. MS. 11,579, in a Latin exemplum. Carleton Brown, English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century, p.32 and notes.

32. Margaret Dean-Smith, cited in A. L. Lloyd, Folk Song in England, p. 154; Annie Gilchrist, 1A note on the 'Herb' and other refrains of certain British Ballads',  VIII (1930) No.34, pp. 237-50.

33. Annie Gilchrist, op. cit.

34. Pearl, ed. E.V.Gordon, (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1953), p.2, line 43:
Gilofre, gyngure and gromylyoun

A similar example occurs in Kyng Alisaunder (ed. G. V. Smithers, E.E.T.S. 227, 1952):
gylofre, quybibbe and mace . . .zauen odour of grace.

The form 'gylofre gentyle' means the sweet variety of the herb, and is found in a list of herbs 'for Savour and beaute' at the beginning of a cookery book of c.1500:

Also Herbes fo(r) Savour and beaute:
Gyllofr' gentyle, Mageron gentyle. . .

(Sloane 1201, cited in Alicia Amherst, A History of Gardening in England, 3rd ed. London 1910, p.68).

35. Chaucer's translation, 'The Romaunt of the Rose', in F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, p.578, 11. 1367-72:
Ther was eke wexyng many a spice,
As clowe-gelofre, and lycorice,
Gyngevre, and greyn de parys,
Canell, and setewale of prys,
And many a spice delitable
To eten whan men rise fro table.

36. Kinsley, Poems of William Dunbar, No. 1.

37. E.g. James Ryman's carol to the Virgin has the following refrain:
A roose hath borne a lilly white,
The whiche floure is moost pure and bright.
Cambridge University MS. Ee 1. 23, f.24v; in Richard Leighton Greene, The Early English Carols, No. 174. No. 175 in Greene, op.cit., from various manuscripts, has the following refrain:
Of a rose, a lovely rose,
Of a rose I syng a song.

38. Cecil J.Sharp, English Folksongs from the Southern Appalachians, I p. 272.

39. E.G. Chaucer, 'The Knight's Tale', Robinson p.36, ll. 1955-62, describes the statue of Venus with doves 'flykeryng' about her head.

40. Lady Alice Bertha Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, I p. 407.

41. Ernst and Johanna Lehrer, Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees, p.71.

42. J.W.Goethe, Die Fischerin, ed. J.M.C.de Bruhl, 1782.

43. See Cecil J. Sharp and Maud Karpeles, Eighty English Folk Songs, No.75.

44. Walter Jekyll, Jamaican Song and Story, pp. 26-7.

45. Elizabeth Johnston Cooke, 'English Folktales in America' (JAF XII, 1899, pp. 126-30).

46. B.A.Botkin, A Treasury of American Folklore, pp. 725-7.

47. Lutz Rohrich, 'Ratsellied' in Handbuch des Volkslieder I, pp.205-33.

48. 'Ibid.' pp.217-21.

49. Ibid., pp.224-5.

50. Svend Grundtvig and Axel Olrik, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No. 18A.

51. Archer Taylor, English Ridffiles from Oral Tradition, 2nd edition, Nos. 1278-1280; 1286-1289.

52. Jan de Vries, Die Marchen von Klugen Ritsellosern, EEG 73 (Helsinki 1928).

53. Herrtage, Gesta Romanorum, No. 56.

----------------------------

APPENDIX A: CHILD 1, 'RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED': DESCRIPTION OF TEXTS.

Key to Description of Texts.

A. Minstrel asks, 'Wol ye here a wonder thynge
Betwyxte a mayd and pe foule fende?'
Fiend asks maid to 'beleve on me, mayd to day'.
If she accepts him as her leman, he will teach her all the wisdom of the world.

B. A knight comes riding from the East and sees a lady's three daughters, the eldest going to wash, the second to bake, the youngest to a wedding. He sits to await their return and it is decided that the youngest shall be his wife.
B¹. Three sisters fair and bright love one valiant knight.
B². A lady in the North Country has three lovely daughters. A Knight, also of the North, of courage stout and brave, desires a wife. He knocks at the lady's gate one night.
B³. A lady in the West has three daughters. A stranger comes to her gate and waits three days and nights.
B⁴. A Knight knocks at a gate loud and late.
B⁵. The Devil goes courting, sword and pistol by his side.
B⁶. A Knight comes riding by and spies a weaver's lass.
B⁷. A gay young cavalier rides, seeking a lady fair. He stops at a widow's door, sees her three daughters and cannot choose between them; he offers his hand to whichever can answer three riddles.
B⁸. An old man in the West has three daughters of the best.

C. The eldest sister lets him in, pinning the door with a silver pin (or, makes the bed); the second makes his bed (or, spreads his sheet/takes off his boots); the third sleeps with him (or, resolves to marry him).
C¹. The eldest daughter opens the door; the second sets him on the floor; the third brings a chair.

D. In the morning, the youngest daughter asks him if he will marry her. He replies that he will do so if she can answer three questions. (Or, the Knight tells the youngest daughter he will marry her if she can answer three questions).
D¹. He says to the first daughter, answer my three questions or go with me. To the second, answer my six questions or you'll be Old Nick's. To all three, answer my nine questions or you'll all be mine.
D². He sets the youngest daughter ten questions; if she can answer them, she will be his.
D³ . He says, if she can't answer three times three questions he will tear her into a thousand pieces.
D⁴. He says, if she can't answer questions three she will be his and go with him (to Hell: she replies she will answer his questions if he will answer hers).
D⁵. He says, she must answer nine questions, 'Or you're not God's, you're one of mine'.
D⁶. 'If you don't answer my questions well (nine),' I'll take you off and I live in Hell (I'll take you off to Hell alive)'.

The Questions
a. What is higher than the tree(s)? -Heaven.
b. What is deeper than the sea(s) -Hell (b1, love).
c. What is sharper than the thorn?- Hunger (c 1 , death).
d. What is louder than the horn? -Thunder (d1, shame).
e. What is earlier than the morn? (e1, what is rader than the day?) - Sin.
f. What is longer (broader) than the way? - Loukynge (f1 , wind; f 2 , love).
g. What is colder than the clay? - Death.
h. What is heavier than the lead? Sin (h1 , grief).
i. What is better than the bread? God's flesh (i1, blessing).
j. What is sharper (stronger) than death? -Pain.
k. What is greener than the wood? - Grass.
l. What is greener than t he grass? - Po1. son ( l1 pies; l 2 , peas; l3 , the grave; l4 , envy).
m. What is sweeter than a nut? - Love.
n. What is swifter than the wind? (n 1 n. hind) Thought ' - (n2l lightning). '
o. What is richer than a King? - Jesus
p. What is yellower than the wax? - Saffron
q.What is softer than flax?Silk
r.What is whiter than milk?Snow
s.What is softer than silk? -Down (s , Love)
t .What is smoother than crystal glass? - Flattery
  What is brighter than the light? - Truth
  What is darker than the night? Falsehood
  What is keener than the axe? - Revenge
  What is softer than melting wax? - Love
  What is rounder than a ring? - The world
u. What red fruit September grows? - Apple
  What thing around the whole world goes? - Air
  What is worse than woman's way? -The Devil
  What is wicked man's repay? -Hell
v. What is innocenter than a lamb? - a Baby
w. What is worse than woman was? (w 1, woman's wuss; w2 woman's will; w3 , an ill woman's wish; w4 womankind) - The Devil/Clootie/The Fiend.

 
N.B. Although there is some overlapping of the riddles lettered t, u, with other riddles, they are treated as separate units because they occur as a group and in only one text.

E. Maid tells fiend, 'Now thu fende, stil thu be, Nelle ich speke no more with thet'
E¹ . As soon as the fiend is named, he flies away in a blazing flame/fiery flame, or, he claps his wings, cries aloud and flies away in a flame of fire.
E². Devil says she has answered correctly and therefore belongs to God and not to him.
E³. Devil says she has answered well, but he'll still carry her off.

F. Knight is pleased and commends girl's wit. He marries her. Dedication of song to all fair maidens, wishing that they remain constant.
F¹. Knight says he will marry girl.
F². Daughters tell stranger that he has their nine, answers and they shall never be his.
F³. Cavalier olaims youngest as bride. Other two are left pondering dumbly, and are perhaps still waiting for the next cavalier. Advice to pretty maidens: 'Be neither coy nor shy,/ But always, when a lover speaks,/ Look kindly and reply.'

Description of Texts.
(Unless otherwise stated, the text has no recorded tune)

(i) 'Inter Diabolus et Virgo'
Place: Plymouth
Date: c.l450
Source: Bodleian MS. Rawlinson D 328, fol.174.
(Miscellanea, acquired by Walter Pollard of Plymouth, 1444-5.)
F. J. Furnivall, 'Three Middle English Poems', Englische Studien, XXIII (1897) pp.444-5.
Child, Vol.V, pp. 283-4.
Description: 22 couplets: no refrain.
A abcdfe¹ ijklmnop E.

(ii) 'A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded, or The Maid's Answer to the Knight's Three Questions'/ 'A Riddle Wittily Expounded'.
Broadsides: Rawlinson 566, fol.l93 (Bodleian).
Coles, Vere,Wright & Clark, Lonrlon 1675
Wood, E.25, fol.15 (Bodleian), the same Euing, No. 253, Coles, Vere & Gilbertson London 1658-64.
Pepys, III 19, No.17 (Magdalen, Camb.), Thackeray, Millet & Milbourn, c.1692.
Douce, II, fol. 168b (Bodleian), white-letter, 18th century.
Printed in T. D'Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy, (London 1719-20); Vol.IV p.129
Child, No. 1A, a, b, c, d.
Bronson, No. 1.1
Description: 23 stanzas: B2 C D f2 bdclw F.
Refrain: Lay the bent to the bonny broom
Fa la la la, fa la la la ra re.
Tune: Group A. Cf. Bronson 1.2, 'Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom': tune from O'Keefe & Shield, The Highland Reel, 1788.
Printed also in William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1859, II p.571
A similar tune, not identical, is printed in J.C.Bruce & J. Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy, 1882, pp.76-8.

(iii) 'The Three Sisters'
Place: Cornwall
Date: 1823
Source: Davies Gilbert, Some Ancient Christmas Carols, (2nd edition, 1823, London)pp.65-7: from the editor's recollection.
Child No. 1B
Bronson 1.4
Description: 10 stanzas, last one incomplete
B 1 C D dcf2 b F1
Refrain: Jennifer gentle and rosemaree
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree
Tune: Group A.

(iv) 'The Unco' Knight's Wooing'
Place: West Scotland
Date: c.1825
Source: Motherwell's MS, p.647, from the recitation of Mrs. Storie (Mary MacQueen). Another recording, almost identical, in
Andrew Crawfurd's Collection, ed. E. B. Lyle (S.T.S. 1975 Vol. I pp. 113-4.)
Child 1C
Description: 19 stanzas
BD² abrsf¹ gll¹ (crawfurd, 1²) w (w¹).
Refrain: Sing the Cather banks, the bonny broom
(Crawf.: Sing the claret banks tae the bonny broom
And ye may beguile a young thing sune.

(v) 'what is higher than the trees?'
Place: W.Scotland
Date: c. 1825
Source: Motherwell's MS. p.42.
Child 1D.
Description: 10 stanzas: abrs¹ cdf¹ glw.
Refrain: Gar lay the bent to the bonny broom
And you may beguile a fair maid soon.

(vi) 'There was a lady in the West'
Place: Northumberland
Date: 1878
Source: From the Mitford family. M.H. Mason,
Nursery Rhymes & Country Songs, 1878, p.31
Lucy Broadwood & J.A. Fuller Maitland,
English County Songs, 1893, pp. 6-7.
Bronson 1.3
Description: 18 stanzas: B³ C¹ D¹ 1⁴ tdc F ².
Refrain: Lay the bank with the bonny broom
Fa lang the dillo, Fa lang the dillo,
dillo, dee.
Tune: Group A

(vii) 'The Knight'
Place: Broad Blunsdon, Wiltshire
Date: 1923
Source: Sung by Thomas Smart. Collected by Alfred Williams, Folksongs of the Upper Thames, 1923, p.37
Description: 9 couplets: B⁴ D³ dcrsab E¹
Refrain: Bow down, bow down, sweetheart, and a bonny lass,/And all things shall go well.

(viii) 'The Devil's Nine Questions'
Place: Giles County, Virginia
Date: 11th September 1922
Source: Sung by Mrs. Rill Martin, collected by Miss Alfreda M. Peel. A.K. Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1929, p.59
Additional stanza supplied, 1933: A.K. Davis
More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1960
Description: 10 stanzas + additional first stanza D⁶ rsdc¹ vw E² + B⁵
Refrain: Sing ninety-nine and ninety
And you are the weaver's bonny.
Tune: Group B. Bronson 1.5
N. B. A further additional stanza, B6 , was supplied in 1932 by Alfreda Peel, published in A. K. Davis, More Traditional
Ballads of Virginia, 1960, pp. 3-7.

(ix) 'Riddles Wisely Expounded'
Place: Narrows, Virginia
Date: c.1930
Source: Mary Davis Adair, from Mrs. P. O. Ivery, also of Narrows. Carpenter MSS., Reel 6, Box IV.
Description: 10 stanzas
D⁶ rsdcabvw E² .
Refrain: Sing ninety-nine and ninety
And you the weaver's bonny.

(x) 'The Devil's Questions'
Place: Gilmer Co., Virginia
Date: c. 1924
Source: Sung by Blanche Kelley, collected by Patrick Gainer. Gainer, Folksongs from the West Virginia Hills, 1975, p.3.
Description: 5 stanzas
D⁴ abde.
Refrain: O maid so peart and bonnie
And you so peart and bonnie.
Tune: Group B.

(xi) 'The Devil's Questions'
Place: N. Carolina
Date: 1933
Source: The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles, 1961
Informant named as Hugh Stallcup.
Description: 12 stanzas
D⁷ rsdc¹abu E³.
Refrain: Sing ninety-nine and ninety
And you the weavering bonty.
Tune: Group B.

(xii) 'The Three Riddles'
Place: Stonington, Maine
Date: August 24, 1934
Source: Sung by Florence Mixer, learned from her father, Mr. Frank S. Mixer, who learned it from his uncle.
P. Barry, BFSSNE X (1935) pp. 8 ff.
Bronson 1.7
Description: 14 stanzas
B7 fbdclw2 F2
No refrain
Tune: unclassified

(xiii) 'The Devil's Nine Questions'
Place: Roanoke, Virginia
Date: 1936
Source: Sung by Mrs. Texas Gladden, collected by M. Ballard.
Text only in University of Virginia Collection, 1547/26/1195.
Recording of Mrs. Gladden, collected by A. and E. Lomax, 1941, in L.C./AAFS
Album 1, rec.4 Al. Text of this only in Duncan Emrich, American Folk Poetry, 1974 p.248.
Bronson 1.6
Description: 1936: 9 stanzas: D⁵rsdc¹ abvw⁴
1941: 10 stanzas: D⁵rsabdc¹vw⁴ E².
Refrain: Sing ninety-nine and ninety
And you are (I am) the weaver's bonny.
Tune: Group B.

(xiv) Fragment
Place: Vermont
Date: May 1, 1940
Source: Mrs. Anna Fiske Hough, whose mother taught it to her from English tradition.
Collected by M. Olney.
H. H. Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally
Sung in New England (henceforward referred to as ABTSNE) 1960 I pp.45-50.
Description: 6 lines: rsw4.
No refrain.

(xv) Fragment
Place: Maine
Date: ? published 1947
309.
Source: Robert P.Tristram Coffin, Lost Paradise,
1947, p.199. Sung by his cousin Laura when he was a child.
Description: 2 lines:
'The eldest sister let him in
And barred the door with a silver pin'.

(xvi) 'There was a man lived in the West'
Place: Vermont
Date: May 12, 1955
Source: Sung by Mrs. Hattie Eldred, collected by M. Olney.
H. H. Flanders, ABTSNE I pp.45-50
Description:
B8 C D⁴ abcdrs¹  E¹ .
Refrain: Bow down, bow down, your bow shall bend to me,
So true to my love, as I love,
My love proves true to me.
Tune: unclassified

(xvii) 'The Devil's Questions'
Place: White Top Mountain, W.Virginia
Date: 1956
Source: Heard by Richard Chase, edited, from a folk festival performance.
Chase, American Folktales and Songs,
1956.
Description: 10 stanzas
D 5 a bl rs d c hl1. l E2.
Refrain: Sing ninety-nine and ninety
And the crow flies over the white oak tree.
Tune: Group B

(xviii) 'The Devil's Questions'
Place: Virginia
Date: 1962
Source: Sung by Richard Chase, collected in
Virginia.
Folkways Monthly I (May 1962) p.l6
Description: 10 stanzas
D5 abrsh1 i 1dc E 2 .
Refrain: Sing ninety~nine and ninety
You're not (I am) the weaver's bonny
Tune: Group B

(xix) 'A Riddling Song'
This is included because it is printed as Child 1, but it seems more likely to be a version of Child 46. See Appendix E,(lxix).
Place: John 0 1 Groats, Caithness
Date: 1969
Source: Sung by Mrs. David Gunn; collected by Alan Bruford.
School of Scottish Studies, SA 1969
48 B5.
Tocher  (1971) p.23
Description: 2 stanzas: 1 3aw3b.
No refrain.
Tune: unclassified (see App.E, lxix)

(xx) 'Nine Questions'
Place: Lewisburg, Greenbrier Co., Virginia
Date: published 1971
Source: Sung by Margaret Moomaw Tuckwiller; collected by Vivian Richardson.
Marie Boette, Singa Hipsy Doodle, 1971, p.37
Description: 8 stanzas
1⁴ rsabdc nw
Refrain: Sing fall-de-rall-de-hall-de
For I'm the weaver's bonnie.
Tune: Group B