251. tellst to.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] Heber had a copy printed by J. Andrews, who flourished 1655-60.
[170] Mrs Barnard makes this note: I remember to have seen a printed ballad, at least seventy years since, in which this was containd, as sung by a youth, overheard by a king he servd, and exalted to become his queen. I fancy these scenes were in Germany, by the names.—Percy regards the verses as a "fragment of an older copy than that printed of 'The Lady turnd Serving-Man.'"
[171] The Border Widow's Lament has received extraordinary favor. It has been translated by Schubart, p. 209; Talvj, Charakteristik, p. 570; Fiedler, Geschichte der schottischen Liederdichtung, p. 29; Freiligrath, Zwischen den Garben, II, 229, Stuttgart, 1877; Doenniges, p. 77; Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 195, No 58. Cunningham furbished up the verses a little in The Songs of Scotland, II, 97. The copy in Chambers's Scottish Songs, I, 174, is Cunningham's, all but the sixth stanza, which is from Scott.—A great deal of nonsense passes in ballads, but I am impelled to ask just here how a lover would go about to clothe a bower with lily-flower. Is the ballad lily a climbing plant?
[107]
WILL STEWART AND JOHN
[A]. 'Will Stewart and John,' Percy Manuscript, p. 428; Hales and Furnivall, III, 216.
[B]. 'Tring Dilly,' Campbell's MSS, II, 30.
The fragment B is disordered as well as mutilated. B 1 corresponds to A 18, 13; 2 to 14; 3 to 19, 40; 4 to 41, 42; 5 to 43; 6 to 35, 36; 7 to 17. It is simply a confused recollection of some parts of the ballad.