John o’ the Side has not, I believe, been presented to readers in its present shape before. It is one of the few instances in which the English version of a ballad is better than the Scottish.
III
The Braes o’ Yarrow is a good example of the Scottish lyrical ballad, the continued rhyme being very effective. The Twa Brothers has become a game, and Lizie Lindsay a song. The Outlyer Bold is a title I have been forced to give to a version of the ballad best known as The Bonnie Banks o’ Fordie; this, it is true, might have come more aptly in the First Series. So also Katharine Jaffray, which enlarges the lesson taught in The Cruel Brother (First Series, p. 76), and adds one of its own.
The Heir of Linne is another of the naïve, delightful ballads from the Percy Folio, and in general style may be compared with The Lord of Learne in the Second Series (p. 182).
IV
Little is to be said of The Gardener or The Whummil Bore, the former being almost a lyric, and the latter presumably a fragment. Waly, waly, is not a ballad at all, and is only included because it has become confused with Jamie Douglas.
The Jolly Juggler seems to be a discovery, and I commend it to the notice of those better qualified to deal with it. The curious fifth line added to each verse may be the work of some minstrel—a humorous addition to, or comment upon, the foregoing stanza. Certain Danish ballads exhibit this peculiarity, but I cannot find any Danish counterpart to the ballad in Prior’s three volumes.
THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT
The Text here given is that of a MS. in the Bodleian Library (Ashmole 48) of about the latter half of the sixteenth century. It was printed by Hearne, and by Percy in the Reliques, and the whole MS. was edited by Thomas Wright for the Roxburghe Club in 1860. In this MS. The Hunting of the Cheviot is No. viii., and is subscribed ‘Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale.’ Sheale is known to have been a minstrel of Tamworth, and it would appear that much of this MS. (including certain poems, no doubt his own) is in his handwriting—probably the book belonged to him. But the supposition that he was author of the Hunting of the Cheviot, Child dismisses as ‘preposterous in the extreme.’