THE MAID AND THE PALMER
The Text is from the Percy Folio MS. The only other known text is a fragment from Sir Walter Scott’s recollection, printed in C. K. Sharpe’s Ballad Book.
The Story is well known in the folklore of Europe, and is especially common in the Scandinavian languages. As a rule, however, all these ballads blend the story of the woman of Samaria with the traditions concerning Mary Magdalen that were extant in mediæval times.
From the present ballad it could hardly be gathered (except, perhaps, from stanza 11) that the old palmer represents Christ. This point is at once obvious in the Scandinavian and other ballads.
The extraordinary burden in the English ballad is one of the most elaborate in existence, and is quite as inexplicable as any.
The expression ‘to lead an ape in hell’ (14.2) occurs constantly in Elizabethan and later literature, always in connection with women who die, or expect to die, unmarried. Dyce says the expression ‘never has been (and never will be) satisfactorily explained’; but it was suggested by Steevens that women who had no mate on earth should adopt in hell an ape as a substitute.