It has been a favourite subject with our English ballad-makers to represent our kings conversing, either by accident or design, with the meanest of their subjects. Of the former kind, besides this song of the King and the Miller; we have K. Henry and the Soldier; K. James I. and the Tinker; K. William III. and the Forrester &c. Of the latter sort, are K. Alfred and the Shepherd; K. Edward IV. and the Tanner;[394] K. Henry VIII. and the Cobler, &c.—A few of the best of these are admitted into this collection. Both the author of the following ballad, and others who have written on the same plan, seem to have copied a very ancient poem, intitled John the Reeve, which is built on an adventure of the same kind, that happened between K. Edward Longshanks, and one of his Reeves or Bailiffs. This is a piece of great antiquity, being written before the time of Edward IV. and for its genuine humour, diverting incidents, and faithful picture of rustic manners, is infinitely superior to all that have been since written in imitation of it. The Editor has a copy in his ancient folio MS. but its length rendered it improper for this volume, it consisting of more than 900 lines. It contains also some corruptions, and the Editor chuses to defer its publication in hopes that some time or other he shall be able to remove them.
The following is printed, with corrections, from the editor's folio MS. collated with an old black-letter copy in the Pepys Collection, intitled A pleasant ballad of K. Henry II. and the Miller of Mansfield, &c.
[This ballad of Henry II. and the Miller of Mansfield cannot be traced farther back than the end of Elizabeth's reign or the beginning of James's. One of the three copies in the Roxburghe Collection is dated by Mr. Chappell between 1621 and 1655, and the copy in the Folio MS. (ed. Hales and Furnivall, vol. ii. p. 147) was written about the same period. (See Roxburghe Ballads, ed. Chappell, vol. i. p. 538.)
As there are earlier copies than the one in the Folio MS. it has not been thought necessary to add Collations.
John the Reeve, referred to above, is one of the earliest and most interesting of this large class of tales. It was printed for the first time in Hales and Furnivall's edition of the MS. (vol. ii. p. 550) with a valuable introduction.
This spirited poem was probably written originally in the middle of the fifteenth century. "It professes to describe an incident that took place in the days of King Edward. It adds:
Of that name were Kings three
But Edward with the long shanks was he,
A lord of great renown.
The poem then was written after the death of Edward III.; that is, after 1377, and before the accession of Edward IV., that is before 1461.">[