The only part of the ballad which has the stamp of indubitably ancient tradition is the child-birth in the wood, and this scene is the rightful, and perhaps exclusive, property of 'Leesome Brand,' No 15: see I, 182. A 24-29, B 40-47, are found again in '[Willie o Douglas Dale],' [A] 15-17, 22, 23, [B] 18, 19, 22, 24, [C] 8-10, and the first part of 'Willie o Douglas Dale,' as well as of the ballad which immediately precedes the present, commonly called 'The Birth of Robin Hood,' is a variation of 'Leesome Brand.'
Robin Hood has no love-story in any ancient ballad, though his name has been foisted into modern love-ballads, as in 'Robin Hood and the Tanner's Daughter,' No 8 C. Maid Marian is a late accretion. There is a piteously vulgar broadside, in which Maid Marian, being parted from Robin Hood, dresses herself "like a page" (but armed fully), meets Robin Hood, also under disguise, and has an hour's fight with him. There is so far a resemblance in this to A 30 ff, B 49, that a woman disguised as a page fights with Robin Hood. I suppose the resemblance to be accidental, but whether it be or not, the question of 'Rose the Red and White Lily' being originally a Robin Hood ballad is not affected.
A 3, B 5, is like C 6 of '[The Clerk's Twa Sons o Owsenford],' No 72.
Scott's copy is translated by Doenniges, p. 40.
A
Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 1.
1 O Rose the Red and White Lilly,
Their mother dear was dead,
And their father married an ill woman,
Wishd them twa little guede.
2 Yet she had twa as fu fair sons
As eer brake manis bread,
And the tane of them loed her White Lilly,
An the tither lood Rose the Red.
3 O biggit ha they a bigly bowr,
And strawn it oer wi san,
And there was mair mirth i the ladies' bowr
Than in a' their father's lan.