All the known copies of this ballad are recent. It is not in Thackeray’s list of broadsides, which dates perhaps as late as 1689 (Chappell, The Roxburghe Ballads, I, xxiv-xxvii); and it is not included in the collection of 1723–25, which showed particular favor to historical pieces. In a manuscript index of first lines to a large collection of songs and ballads “formed in 1748,” I find, “As our king lay on his bed,” and the ballad may probably have first been published in the second quarter of the last century. In a woodcut below the title of a, b, there are two soldiers with G R on the flap of the coat and G on the cap (no doubt in c as well); the date of these broadsides cannot therefore be earlier than the accession of George I, 1714. The broadside is in a popular manner, but has no mark of antiquity. It may, however, represent an older ballad, disfigured by some purveyor for the Aldermary press.
It is probable that the recited versions had their ultimate source in print, and that printed copies were in circulation which, besides the usual slight variations,[[188]] contained two more stanzas, one after 2 and another after 8, such as are found in h and elsewhere; which stanzas are likely to have formed part of the original matter.
After 2, h (see also g, i, j):
Tell him to send me my tribute home,
Ten ton of gold that is due to me;
Unless he send me my tribute home,
Soon in French land I will him see.
After 8, h (see also g, i, k, m):
O then bespoke our noble king,
A solemn vow then vowed he: