[This ballad was printed in the third volume of the first edition of the Reliques, Book ii. No. 12, but was afterwards expunged by Percy. Professor Child gives the following references in his collection of English and Scottish Ballads, vol. viii. p. 152:—"The same story circulates among the peasantry of England and Scotland in the form of a penny tract or chap-book, Notices of Popular Histories, p. 16, (Percy Soc. vol. xxiii.); Notes and Queries, New Series, vol. iii. p. 49. This jest is an old one. Mr. Halliwell refers to a fabliau in Barbazan's Collection, which contains the groundwork of this piece, Du Vilain qui Conquist Paradis par Plait, Meon's ed. iv. 114.">[
In Bath a wanton wife did dwelle,
As Chaucer he doth write;
Who did in pleasure spend her dayes;
And many a fond delight.
Upon a time sore sicke she was 5
And at the length did dye;
And then her soul at heaven gate,
Did knocke most mightilye.
First Adam came unto the gate:
Who knocketh there? quoth hee 10
I am the wife of Bath, she sayd,
And faine would come to thee.
Thou art a sinner, Adam sayd,
And here no place shalt have.
And so art thou, I trowe, quoth shee, 15
'and eke a' doting knave.[463]
I will come in, in spight, she sayd,
Of all such churles as thee;
Thou wert the causer of our woe,
Our paine and misery; 20
And first broke God's commandiments,
In pleasure of thy wife.
When Adam heard her tell this tale,
He ranne away for life.