THE NUTBROWNE MAIDE.
We owe the preservation of this beautiful old ballad to Arnold's Chronicle, of which the earliest edition is thought to have been printed in 1502. In Laneham's account of Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth, the Nut-brown Maid is mentioned as a book by itself, and there is said to be at Oxford a list of books offered for sale at that place in 1520, among which is the Not-Broon Mayd, price one penny; still, the ballad is not known to exist at present in any other ancient form than that of the Chronicle. We have no means of determining the date of the composition, but Percy has justly remarked that it is not probable that an antiquary would have inserted a piece in his historical collections which he knew to be modern. The language is that of the time at which it was printed.
The ballad seems to have been long forgotten, when it was revived in The Muse's Mercury for June, 1707, (Percy.) There Prior met with it, and, charmed with its merit, he took the story for the foundation of his Henry and Emma. Capel, in 1760, published a collated text from two different editions of the Chronicle,—we suppose that of 1502, and the second, which was printed in 1521, and exhibits some differences. Percy adopted Capel's text with a few alterations, (Reliques, ii. 30.) The text of the edition of 1502 has been twice reprinted since Percy's time: in the
Censura Literaria, vol. i. p. 15, and by Mr. Wright, in a little black-letter volume, London, 1836. We have adopted Mr. Wright's text, not neglecting to compare it with that of Sir Egerton Brydges.
It will be interesting to compare with this matchless poem a ballad in other languages, which has the same drift;—Die Lind im Thale, or Liebesprobe, Erk, Deutscher Liederhort, p. 1, 3; Uhland, No. 116; Hoffmann, Schlesische V. L., No. 22, Niederländische V. L., No. 26; Haupt and Schmaler, V. L. der Wenden, i. 72 (Hoffmann).
In the sixteenth century a ridiculous attempt was made to supplant the popular ballads in the mouths and affections of the people by turning them into pious parodies. The Nut-Brown Maid was treated in this way, and the result may be seen in The New Not-borune Mayd, printed by the Roxburghe Club, and by the Percy Society, vol. vi.
"Be it right or wrong, these men among
On women do complaine,
Affermyng this, how that it is
A labour spent in vaine
To love them wele, for never a dele5
They love a man agayne:
For lete a man do what he can
Ther favour to attayne,
Yet yf a newe [do] them pursue,
Ther furst trew lover than10
Laboureth for nought, and from her thought
He is a bannished man."
"I say not nay, but that all day
It is bothe writ and sayde,
That womans fayth is, as who sayth,15
All utterly decayed:
But nevertheles, right good witnes
In this case might be layde,
That they love trewe, and contynew,—
Recorde THE NUTBROWNE MAIDE;20
Whiche from her love, whan her to prove
He cam to make his mone,
Wolde not departe, for in her herte
She lovyd but hym allone."