‘If seven king’s-daughters here ye hae slain,
Lye ye here, a husband to them a’.’
A NOBLE RIDDLE WISELY EXPOUNDED
The Text is from a broadside of the seventeenth century from the press of Coles, Vere, Wright, and Clarke, now preserved in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library.
The Story of this ballad is one of the common class of riddle-ballads. Some of these riddles are found also in Captain Wedderburn.
It is not clear why in 18.1 ‘poyson is greener than the grass.’ In Captain Wedderburn (17.1) it is ‘death’ that is greener than the grass, which is equally inexplicable. A variant of the latter gives ‘virgus’ [= verjuice], a kind of vinegar, which obviously means ‘green juice.’ It is possible that this might come to be regarded as a synonym for ‘poyson’; and the next step is to substitute ‘death’ for ‘poyson.’
A NOBLE RIDDLE WISELY EXPOUNDED
1.
There was a lady of the North Country,