PART VI
156
QUEEN ELEANOR’S CONFESSION
A. a. ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession,’ a broadside, London, Printed for C. Bates, at the Sun and Bible in Gilt-spur-street, near Pye-corner, Bagford Ballads, II, No 26, British Museum (1685?). b. Another broadside, Printed for C. Bates in Pye-corner, Bagford Ballads, I, No 33 (1685?). c. Another copy, Printed for C. Bates, in Pye-corner, reprinted in Utterson’s Little Book of Ballads, p. 22. d. A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, I, 18.
B. Skene MS., p. 39.
C. ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession,’ Buchan’s Gleanings, p. 77.
D. ‘The Queen of England,’ Aytoun, Ballads of Scotland, 1859, I, 196.
E. ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession,’ Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 247.
F. ‘Earl Marshall,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 1.
Given in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, II, 145, “from an old printed copy,” with some changes by the editor, of which the more important are in stanzas 2–4. F, “recovered from recitation” by Motherwell, repeats Percy’s changes in 2, 3, 104, and there is reason to question whether this and the other recited versions are anything more than traditional variations of printed copies. The ballad seems first to have got into print in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but was no doubt circulating orally some time before that, for it is in the truly popular tone. The fact that two friars hear the confession would militate against a much earlier date. In E there might appear to be some consciousness of this irregularity; for the Queen sends for a single friar, and the King says he will be “a prelate old” and sit in a dark corner; but none the less does the King take an active part in the shrift.[[143]]
There is a Newcastle copy, “Printed and sold by Robert Marchbank, in the Customhouse-Entry,” among the Douce ballads in the Bodleian Library, 3, fol. 80, and in the Roxburghe collection, British Museum, III, 634. This is dated in the Museum catalogue 1720?