In another version the man yields to the girl's tears, and is laughed at in the conclusion: 'Le galant maladroit,' Poésies pop. de la France, MS., III, fol. 139, fol. 141; 'La fille bien avisée,' fol. 524; IV, fol. 350, 'Il était un chasseur;' VI, 119=Rolland, I, 23, No 4, c; Gerard de Nerval, La Bohème Galante, p. 96, ed. 1866=Les Faux Saulniers, Œuvres complètes, 1868, IV, 398; Buchon, p. 76, No 2; Beaurepaire, p. 33 f; Guillon, p. 101; Tarbé, 'L'honnête Garçon,' II, 137; Rolland, 'L'Occasion manquée,' I, 23, No 4 b; Puymaigre, 'La Rencontre,' p. 113, 2d ed. I, 154. The "moral" is wanting in very few of these.
Still other varieties, with omissions, additions, or changes which need not be particularized, are: 'L'Amant discret,' Puymaigre, p. 112, I, 153; Guillon, pp. 29, 273; 'L'autre jour,' Bladé, P. p. de l'Armagnac, p. 114; 'Praube Moussu,' Bladé, Poésies pop. de la Gascogne, II, 66, Moncaut, p. 356; Rolland, I, 23, No 4, a; 'Lou Pastre,' Bladé, II, 114; Bujeaud, I, 254; 'Lou Pastour et la Pastouro,' Daymard, Collection de vieilles chansons recueillies à Serignac, p. 16, which last I have not seen.
Italian. 'La figlia del re,' Ferraro, Canti p. monferrini, p. 76, No 55. A damsel lost in a wood asks a cavalier to show her the way. He takes her on his horse. She, for a reason not given, but to be gathered from the other southern ballads, tells him that she is daughter of a poor man who has had seven years of sickness. Get down from the horse, he says, and I will show you the way. At the end of the wood she tells him she is daughter of a rich merchant, proprietor of many farms. He solicits her to mount again. No; he has had the quail and let it fly; yonder is the castle of her father the king.
Danish. 'I Rosenslund,' Grundtvig, IV, 357, No 230, four copies: A, previously in Levninger, II, 51, No 9, C, "Tragica, No 14," 1657, Danske Viser, III, 94, No 122. D has a false conclusion. In A, the best copy, from MSS of the seventeenth century, a knight who is hawking and hunting finds a damsel in a wood. She has been there all night, she says, listening to the birds. He says, Not so, it is a tryst with a knight; and she owns that this is the case. He proposes that she shall throw over this lover and accept him. She will not give her faith to two, and asks him for his honor's sake to convey her to her bower. She rides, he walks; and when they come to the bower she locks him out, wishing him ill night and laughing as he rides away.
'Den dyre Kaabe,' Grundtvig, IV, 362, No 231, two copies, from MSS of the seventeenth century. A maid and a young man meet in a wood or mead. She invites him to spread both of their cloaks on the ground for a bed. His new scarlet cloak cost him fifteen mark in Stockholm, and he will not spoil it by laying it in the dew. If he will wait, she will go home to her mother's, not far, and bring a bolster. She goes off laughing and leaves him expecting her all that day and the next, but she does not come back. Eight weeks after he meets her at the church door and asks an explanation. He may thank his cloak of scarlet new for his disappointment; had she been a young man and met a maid, she would not have spared her cloak though it were cloth of gold. The reference to Stockholm points to a Swedish origin for this ballad, but it is not, says Grundtvig, extant in Swedish.
German. 'Das Mäntelein,' "Frankfurter Liederbuch 1584, No 150," Uhland, p. 245, No 106, Mittler, No 32. A young man and maid go out into the green three hours before day. After rebuffing him, she strangely asks him, as if she knew that he would not consent, to spread his cloak on the grass. His cloak cost him fifty pound, and would be spoiled. In the evening, as she stands in her tower, the young man passes and greets her. She answers, The angels above will requite your cloak for my coming off a maid.
The artifice by which the lady disembarrasses herself in the Third Part of the broadside ballad, by pulling off the knight's boots half-way, is a very familiar story, found also in a modern German ballad, Walter, p. 94, No 64. See Les cent nouvelles Nouvelles, 1432 and earlier, No 24, ed. Wright, Paris, 1858, I, 128; Hondorff, Promptuarium Exemplorum, "1572, fol. 310," 1586, 362 b; Kirchhof, Wendunmuth, 1562, ed. Oesterley, III, 228, and other places, besides these, cited by Oesterley, IV, 101.
A modern French ballad, attributed to Favart, which may very probably have had a basis in popular tradition, celebrates the fille d'honneur who escapes from the importunity of her seigneur by distracting his attention (as the lady does in the second adventure in English C), and leaping on to the horse from which he had dismounted to make love to her, in some versions taking his valise with her: 'La villageoise avisée,' from Recueil de romances historiques, tendres et burlesques, tant anciennes et modernes, par M. D. L**, 1767, I, 299, in Hoffmann und Richter, Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 354; 'La Bergère rusée,' Puymaigre, pp. 119, 121, or I, 160, 162; Poésies pop. de la France, MS., III, fol. 37, 284, 294, 522, VI, 472; Wolff, Altfranzösische Volkslieder, p. 142; Tarbé, 'La Fille d'Honneur,' II, 147; 'Le Cavalier,' Guillon, p. 175. On this French ballad is founded 'Junkernlust und Mädchenlist,' Hoffmann u. Richter, p. 156, No 132, 'Der Junker und das Mädchen,' Erk u. Irmer, iv, 66, No 60, 'Die Verschmitzte,' Zuccalmaglio, p. 195, No 93. Somewhat similar are 'List der Bedrukte,' Willems, Oude vlaemsche Liederen, p. 215, No 88; 'The Scotchman Outwitted,' Old Ballads, 1723, I, 211, and Ritson's Select Collection of English Songs, 1783, II, 286; 'The Courtier and Country Maid,' Pills to Purge Melancholy, I, 128, ed. 1719.
In a Romaic ballad a maid makes a youngster who solicits her carry her over a river, then holds him off by promises while they cross field and meadow, and when they reach a hamlet sets the dogs at him: [a]Ἡ Απατη], "Xanthopoulos, Trapezountia, in [a]Φιλολογικος Συνεκδημος], 1849, p. 436;" Kind, Anthologie, 1861, p. 86, Passow, No 481. (Without the dogs, in Ioannidis, p. 276, No 4.)
There is a French ballad in which a maid who is rowing a man over a piece of water receives amorous proposals from him, exacts a large sum of money, lands the gallant, and pushes off: 'La Batelière,' 'La jolie Batelière,' 'La Batelière rusée,' Puymaigre, p. 145, or I, 186, p. 147; Fleury, Littérature orale de la Basse-Normandie, p. 308; Poésies pop. de la France, MS., III, 137; Bujeaud, II, 307; Decombe, p. 323.