[8]. b was kindly copied for me by Mr J. P. Collier in 1857. Mr Collier described his fragment as “a scrap which once formed the fly-leaf of a book.” Hazlitt says that the type is clearly older than Copland’s, and very like Wynkyn de Worde’s.
[9]. This old woman gives the title ‘Auld Matrons’ to a ballad in Buchan’s larger collection, II, 238, in which kitchen-tradition has made over some of the incidents in the First Fit of Adam Bell.
[10]. Vischer, Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstädte, pp 33, 36 f; Rochholz, Germania, XIII, 56 f. “Wa er das nit hette gethan, so hette er selbs müssen darumb sterben:” Russ’s Chronicle, 1482, Vischer, p. 50.
[11]. Liliencron, Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen, II, 109, No 147; Böhme, p. 47, No 10; Vischer, p. 46; Rochholz, Tell u. Gessler, p. 180; Tobler, p. 3. This or a like song was known to Russ, 1482. Tschudi, about a hundred years later, c. 1570, says that the child was five or six, not more than six, years old: Vischer, p. 122. There is another, but later and even worse, “song” about William Tell and the confederacy: Böhme, No 11, p. 49; Wunderhorn, 1808, II, 129; etc.
[12]. Müllenhoff, Sagen, u. s. w., der Herzogthümer Schleswig Holstein u. Lauenburg, p. 57, No 66. The story is localized at another place in Holstein, with the change of apple to pear: Lütolf, Germania, VIII, 213.
[13]. Torfæus, in his history of Norway, III, 371, speaks of a ballad about Heming sung in his time, c. 1700, which would seem to have been the same as this, only somewhat fuller. Landstad, p. 187.
These ballads represent the king as regarding himself as quite unapproachable in athletic exercises. The little boy of ballads, smádrengin, kongins lítil svein, Norwegian B, Färöe A, or, in a Färöe variation (Hammershaimb, p. 161), Harald’s queen, intimates knowledge of an equal or superior. Harald answers, in true ballad style, in Färöe A 6, If he is not my better, you shall burn for it. In Norwegian B, Färöe A, the king immediately sets out to find his rival. Cf. Charlemagne and King Arthur, I, 275, 279, and the beginning of ‘King Estmere,’ II, 51, and Landstad, p. 177, note 1.
[14]. The Witches’ Hammer was composed in 1486, and Punker is there recorded to have exercised his devil’s craft sixty years before. Elsewhere Punker [Pumper] is said to have been torn to pieces by oppressed peasants in 1420. The name is spelled Puncler in the edition of 1620, pp 248 f, and Puncher in the edition followed by Grimm. See Rochholz in Germania, XIII, 48–51.
[15]. The Tell story, complete, Apfelschuss, Felsensprung und Tyrannenmord, is said to occur among the Finns and the Lapps: E. Pabst, cited by Pfannenschmid, Germania, IX, 5. Particulars’, which are very desirable, are not given. This would not add much to the range of the story.
[16]. In the prose Hemings Ðáttr, the intent to take vengeance appears from Hemingr’s wish that the king should stand close to the mark; in the ballads he reserves an arrow. In the Ólafs Saga, Eindriði openly announces his purpose; in all but this version (treating the prose Hemings Ðáttr and the ballads as one), the archer provides himself with two arrows, or three.