76. The Lass of Roch Royal.
P. 215. ‘Germaine’: see Daymard, p. 170; Revue des Traditions populaires, III, 364; Beauquier, Chansons pop. recueillies en Franche-Comté, p. 259.
77. Sweet William’s Ghost.
P. 228 f., 233, 239, III, 514, IV, 474. Of the succession of three cocks, white, red, black (reduced to two in English ballads), see R. Köhler, Der weisse, der rothe und der schwarze Hahn, Germania, XI, 85-92. [So in the tale ‘L’Andromède et les Démons,’ Georgeakis et Pineau, Folk-lore de Lesbos, p. 82 f.]
228, note †. Two or three additions in Böhme’s Erk, I, 598 ff., No 197, c, d, g.
78. The Unquiet Grave.
P. 235 a, last paragraph. Servian ballad in which a child’s shirt is wet with its mother’s tears, Rajković, p. 143, No 186, ‘Dete Lovzar i majka mu’ (‘The child and his mother’).
[235. Tears burning the dead. Professor Lanman furnishes the following interesting parallel from the Mahābhārata, XI, 43 ff.: Dhṛtarāṣṭra is lamenting for his fallen sons. His charioteer says;—The face that thou wearest, covered with falling tears, is not approved by the sacred books; nor do wise men praise it. For they [the tears], like sparks, ’tis said, do burn those men (for whom they’re shed).]
79. The Wife of Usher’s Well.
[P. 238, III, 513. Communicated, 1896, by Miss Emma M. Backus, of North Carolina, who notes that it has long been sung by the “poor whites” in the mountains of Polk County in that State. It has the mother’s prayer for the return of her children, as in C, III, 513, but is in other respects much nearer to A. In the last stanza we should doubtless read “They wet our winding sheet,” or the like. In 43 the MS. has louely or lonely, perhaps meant for lovely.