For sith men wolde that wymen sholde
Be meke to them echeon,
Moche more ought they to God obey,
And serue but Hym alone.
FAIR JANET
The Text.—Of seven or eight variants of this ballad, only three preserve the full form of the story. On the whole, the one here given—from Sharp’s Ballad Book, as sung by an old woman in Perthshire—is the best, as the other two—from Herd’s Scots Songs, and the Kinloch MSS.—are slightly contaminated by extraneous matter.
The Story is a simple ballad-tale of ‘true-love twinned’; but the episode of the dancing forms a link with a number of German and Scandinavian ballads, in which compulsory dancing and horse-riding is made a test of the guilt of an accused maiden. In the Scotch ballad the horse-riding has shrunk almost to nothing, and the dancing is not compulsory. The resemblance is faint, and the barbarities of the Continental versions are happily wanting in our ballad.
FAIR JANET
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