No other text is known to me. The volume of Anglia containing the ballad was not published till 1903, some five years after Professor Child’s death; and I believe he would have included it in his collection had he known of it.
The Story narrates the subjugation of a proud lady who scorns all her wooers, by a juggler who assumes the guise of a knight. On the morrow the lady discovers her paramour to be a churl, and he is led away to execution, but escapes by juggling himself into a meal-bag: the dust falls in the lady’s eye.
It would doubtless require a skilled folk-lorist to supply full critical notes and parallels; but I subjoin such details as I have been able to collect.
In The Beggar Laddie (Child, No. 280, v. 116) a pretended beggar or shepherd-boy induces a lassie to follow him, ‘because he was a bonny laddie.’ They come to his father’s (or brother’s) hall; he knocks, four-and-twenty gentlemen welcome him in, and as many gay ladies attend the lassie, who is thenceforward a knight’s or squire’s lady.
In The Jolly Beggar (Child, No. 279, v. 109), which, with the similar Scottish poem The Gaberlunzie Man, is attributed without authority to James V. of Scotland, a beggar takes up his quarters in a house, and will only lie behind the hall-door, or by the fire. The lassie rises to bar the door, and is seized by the beggar. He asks if there are dogs in the town, as they would steal all his ‘meal-pocks.’ She throws the meal-pocks over the wall, saying, ‘The deil go with your meal-pocks, my maidenhead, and a’.’ The beggar reveals himself as a braw gentleman.
A converse story is afforded by the first part of the Norse tale translated by Dasent in Popular Tales from the Norse, 1888, p. 39, under the title of Hacon Grizzlebeard. A princess refuses all suitors, and mocks them publicly. Hacon Grizzlebeard, a prince, comes to woo her. She makes the king’s fool mutilate the prince’s horses, and then makes game of his appearance as he drives out the next day. Resolved to take his revenge, Hacon disguises himself as a beggar, attracts the princess’s notice by means of a golden spinning-wheel, its stand, and a golden wool-winder, and sells them to her for the privilege of sleeping firstly outside her door, secondly beside her bed, and finally in it. The rest of the tale narrates Hacon’s method of breaking down the princess’s pride.
Other parallels of incident and phraseology may be noted:—
4.1 ‘well good steed’; ‘well good,’ a commonplace = very good; for ‘well good steed,’ cf. John o’ the Side, 34.3 ([p. 162] of this volume).
7.1 ‘Four-and-twenty knights.’ The number is a commonplace in ballads; especially cf. The Beggar Laddie (as above), Child’s text A, st. 13:
‘Four an’ tuenty gentelmen