Lewis had access to William Tytler's copy, and, having regulated the rhymes, filled out a gap, dropped the passage about the girdle, and made other changes to his taste, printed the ballad in 1801 as No 56 of his Tales of Wonder. The next year Scott gave the "ancient copy, never before published," "in its native simplicity, as taken from Mrs Brown of Falkland's MS.,"—William Tytler's,—in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 27, but not with literal accuracy. Jamieson, in 1806, gave 'Sweet Willy,' almost exactly according to the text of his Brown manuscript, in an appendix to the second volume of his collection, p. 367, and at p. 175 of the same volume, a reconstruction of the ballad which might have been spared.
b lacks altogether the passage which makes proffer of the cup, a, stanzas 5-11, and substitutes at that place the girdle of a 21-28. The woodbine in a 36, 41, is also wanting, and the concluding stanza. A deficiency both in matter and rhyme at a 32, is supplied by b 25, 26, but not happily:
'An do you to your mither then,
An bid her come to your boy's christnen;
'For dear's the boy he's been to you:
Then notice well what she shall do.'
Again, the transition in a, from st. 33 to st. 34, is abrupt even for a ballad, and b introduces here four stanzas narrating the execution of the Billy Blind's injunctions, and ending,
And notic'd well what she did say,
whereby we are prepared for the witch's exclamations.[102]
Danish versions of this ballad are numerous: A-I, 'Hustru og Mands Moder' ['Fostermoder,' 'Stifmoder'], Grundtvig, No 84, II, 404 ff; J-T, 'Hustru og Mands Moder,' Kristensen, II, 111 ff, No 35: U-X,'Barselkvinden,' Kristensen, I, 201 ff, No 74; Y, 'Hustru og Slegfred,' Grundtvig, No 85, II, 448 ff: in all twenty-five, but many of Kristensen's copies are fragments. Grundtvig's 84 A, B, and 85 a are from manuscripts of the sixteenth century. 84 F-I and several repetitions of 85 are of the seventeenth. Grundtvig's 84 C, D, E, and all Kristensen's versions, are from recent oral tradition. Some of these, though taken down since 1870, are wonderfully well preserved.
The Danish ballads divide into two classes, principally distinguished by their employing or not employing of the artifice of wax children. (There is but one of these in N, R, Kristensen's E, I, II, 116, 122, and in the oldest Swedish ballad, as in the Scottish: but children in Scandinavian ballads are mostly born in pairs.) Of the former class, to which our only known copy belongs, are F-I, N-T, X (Grundtvig, 84 F-I, Kristensen, II, No 35, E-L, I, No 74 D). N and I furnish, perhaps, the most consistent story, which, in the former, runs thus: Sir Peter married Ellen (elsewhere Mettelille, Kirstin, Tidelil, Ingerlil), and gave her in charge to his mother, a formidable witch, and, as appears from F, violently opposed to the match. The first night of her marriage Ellen conceived twins. She wrapped up her head in her cloak and paid a visit to her mother-in-law, to ask how long women go with child. The answer was,