[A]. a. Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia, or, The Second Part of Musicks Melodie, or Melodious Musicke, London, 1609. 'The Over Courteous Knight,' Ritson's Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 159. b. Pills to Purge Melancholy, III, 37, 1719.
[B]. Pills to Purge Melancholy, V, 112, 1719.
[C]. a. 'The Baffled Knight, or, The Lady's Policy.' A Collection of Old Ballads, III, 178, 1725. b. 'The Lady's Policy, or, The Baffled Knight,' Three Parts (the first fifty stanzas), Pepys Ballads, V, Nos 162-164. c. Douce Ballads, III, fol. 52b. d. 'The Baffled Knight, or, The Lady's Policy,' Roxburghe Ballads, III, 674.
[D]. a. 'The Shepherd's Son,' Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, p. 328, 1769. b. 'Blow the Winds, Heigh ho!' Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 123, Percy Society, vol. xvii; Bell, p. 80.
[E]. 'The Knight and Lady,' Motherwell's MS., p. 410.
A b is in the first volume of the editions of 1698, 1707: Chappell, Popular Music, p. 62. B is in the third volume of the edition of 1707, and is also printed in A Complete Collection of Old and New English and Scotch Songs, 8vo, 1735, which I have not seen: Chappell, p. 520.
The original story, represented by A, B, and C 1-17, appears to have been revived at the end of the seventeenth century, and to have been so much relished as to encourage the addition of a Second, Third, and Fourth Part, all of which were afterwards combined, as in C a, c, d.[180]
Percy inserted a version of C, abridged to forty-five stanzas, in his Reliques, 1765, III, 238, 1767, II, 339, which was "given, with some corrections,[181] from a MS. copy, and collated with two printed ones in Roman character in the Pepys collection." Although "MS. copy" in Percy's case may mean nothing, while "some corrections" may signify much, it has been thought best to reprint Percy's ballad in an Appendix.
D is repeated in Johnson's Museum, p. 490, No 477, with a slight change in the first line. It probably belongs to the first half of the eighteenth century.