FOOTNOTES:
[208] But a has two stanzas more: the first a stev-stamme, or lyrical introduction (see p. 7), the other, 31, nearly a repetition of Sandvig's 29.
[209] After the page has bidden Ingerlille to the wake, we are told, a 27, 28, b 26, 27: all the convent bells were going, and the tidings spreading that the knight was dead; all the ladies of the convent sat sewing, except Ingerlille, who wept. But Ingerlille, in the next stanza, puts on her scarlet cloak and goes to the höjeloft to see her father and mother. The two stanzas quoted signify nothing in this version.
[26]
THE THREE RAVENS
a. Melismata. Musicall Phansies. Fitting the Court, Cittie, and Countrey Humours. London, 1611, No 20.[210] [T. Ravenscroft.]
b. 'The Three Ravens,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xviii, No XII.
a was printed from Melismata, by Ritson, in his Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 155. Mr. Chappell remarked, about 1855, Popular Music of the Olden Time, I, 59, that this ballad was still so popular in some parts of the country that he had "been favored with a variety of copies of it, written down from memory, and all differing in some respects, both as to words and tune, but with sufficient resemblance to prove a similar origin." Motherwell, Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxvii, note 49, says he had met with several copies almost the same as a. b is the first stanza of one of these (traditional) versions, "very popular in Scotland."
The following verses, first printed in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and known in several versions in Scotland, are treated by Motherwell and others as a traditionary form of 'The Three Ravens.' They are, however, as Scott says, "rather a counterpart than a copy of the other," and sound something like a cynical variation of the tender little English ballad. Dr Rimbault (Notes and Queries, Ser. V, III, 518) speaks of unprinted copies taken down by Mr Blaikie and by Mr Thomas Lyle of Airth.