F.
"It was sung in Forfarshire forty years ago by girls during the progress of some game, which I do not now distinctly recollect. A lady, at the point of being executed, cries Stop, stop! I think I see my father coming. Then, addressing her father, she asks," as in stanza 2; "to which the father replies," as in stanza 3. "Mother, brother, sister, are each addressed in turn, and give the same answer. Last of all the fair sinner sees her lover coming, and on putting the question to him is answered thus," as in stanza 4; "whereupon the game ends." W. F. (2), Saline Manse, Fife.
G. a.
Before stanza 1: "I think the title of this ballad is 'The Golden Key.' The substance of it is that a woman has lost a gold key, and is about to be hung, when she exclaims, as in stanza 1. Then follows" stanza 2. After 2: "Father, mother, brother, sister, all in turn come up, and have not found the lost key. At last the sweet-heart appears, who exclaims triumphantly," as in stanza 3. "I write this from memory. I never saw it in print." H. Fishwick.
b.
"A lady writes to me, My mother used to hear, in Lancashire and Cheshire, a ballad of which she only recollects three lines:
And I'm not come to set you free,
But I am come to see you hanged,
All under the gallows-tree.
The last line was repeated, I believe, in every verse." William Andrews.
H. a.
The verses form part of a Yorkshire story called The Golden Ball. A man gives a golden ball to each of two lasses, and if either loses the ball she is to be hanged. The younger, while playing with her ball, tosses it over a park-paling; the ball runs away over the grass into a house, and is seen no more.