Then spake her cruel step-minnie:
'Tak ye the burning lead,
And drap a drap on her bosome,
To try if she be dead.'
They took a drap o boiling lead,
They drappd it on her breast;
'Alas, alas,' her father cried,
'She's dead without the priest!'
She neither chatterd with her teeth,
Nor shiverd with her chin;
'Alas, alas,' her father cried,
'There is nae breath within!'
After 36 is inserted:
'Commend me to my grey father,
That wished my saul gude rest,
But wae be to my cruel step-dame,
Garrd burn me on the breast.'
And mother, 373, is changed to sisters. The step-mother clearly does not belong to this ballad.
FOOTNOTES:
[160] Or her soul, in a copy which terminates with a miracle, Victor Smith, Chansons du Velay, etc., Romania, IV, 114: where see note 2.
[161] See Uhland, III, 109 f, 171.
[162] The contrast presented by darker ages, when cheap literature was unknown, may be seen from these verses: