VIII.
THE BAILIFF'S DAUGHTER OF ISLINGTON.
From an ancient black-letter copy in the Pepys Collection, with some improvements communicated by a lady as she had heard the same recited in her youth. The full title is, True love requited: Or, the Bailiff's daughter of Islington.
Islington in Norfolk is probably the place here meant.
[Copies of this charming old ballad are found in all the large collections, and two tunes are associated with it.
Percy's suggestion that Islington in Norfolk is referred to is not a probable one, and there seems to be no reason for depriving the better known Islington of the south of the honour of having given birth to the bailiff's daughter. Islington at the time when this ballad was written was a country village quite unconnected with London, and a person who represented "a squier minstrel of Middlesex" made a speech before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575, in which he declared "how the worshipful village of Islington [was] well knooen too bee one of the most auncient and best tounz in England, next to London.">[
