From Reliques of English Poetry, i. 65.
"This romantic legend," says Percy, "is given from two copies, one of them in the Editor's folio MS., but which contained very great variations." This second copy has been conjectured to be of Percy's own making, the ballad never having been heard of by any one else, out of his manuscript. Judging from the internal evidence, the alterations made in the printed text were not very serious.
King Easter and King Wester have appeared in the ballad of Fause Foodrage, (vol. iii. p. 40.) In another version of the same, they are called the Eastmure king and the Westmure king, (Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. lix.) There is also a tale cited in the Complaynt of Scotland, (i. 98,) of a king of Estmureland that married the daughter of the king of Westmureland. This is plausibly supposed by Ritson to have been a romance of Horn, in which case the two countries should mean England and Ireland. King Esmer is one of King Diderik's champions (in the Danish ballad, Kong Diderik og hans Kæmper), and the father of Svend Vonved (in Svend Vonved). In the Flemish and German romances of The Knight of the Swan, Essmer, or Esmerés, is one of the seven sons of Oriant, and in Le Dit de Flourence de Romme (Jubinal, Nouveau Recueil de Contes, etc., i. 88), Esmère is a Roman prince. (Grundtvig, i. 78, 236.) For the nonce, we are told
that King Estmere was an English prince, and we may, perhaps, infer from the eighth stanza that King Adland's dominions were on the same island. But no subject of inquiry can be more idle than the geography of the romances.
Hearken to me, gentlemen,
Come and you shall heare;
Ile tell you of two of the boldest brethren,
That ever born y-were.
The tone of them was Adler yonge,5
The tother was kyng Estmere;
They were as bolde men in their deedes
As any were, farr and neare.
As they were drinking ale and wine
Within kyng Estmeres halle,10
"When will ye marry a wyfe, brother,
A wyfe to gladd us all?"
Then bespake him kyng Estmere,
And answered him hartilye:
"I knowe not that ladye in any lande,15
That is able to marry with mee."
"Kyng Adland hath a daughter, brother,
Men call her bright and sheene;
If I were kyng here in your stead,