"On an occasion of household festivity, when her husband was high in fame, she vindicated some little ostentation in her dress by whispering to her niece, now Mrs. Lane, 'I have some right to this, for you know, my love, I am a prince's daughter.'"
The biographer of the British Painters prefaces this by saying,
"Nor must I omit to tell that rumour conferred other attractions (besides an annuity) upon her; she was said to be the natural daughter of one of our exiled princes, nor was she, when a wife and a mother, desirous of having this circumstance forgotten."
As I just now read in Vol. iv., p. 244., some account of Berwick, and other natural children of James II., I was put in mind of the above anecdote, and should be glad of any information respecting the Miss Burr's parentage in question. Myself a collateral descendant of her husband, I know from other sources that the tradition is worthy of credit; and to the genealogist and antiquary it may be a historically interesting enquiry.
H. W. G. R.
Northern Ballads.
—Is any gentleman in possession of any old printed copies of Danish or Swedish popular ballads, or of any manuscript collection of similar remains? Are any such known to exist in any public library in Great Britain? By printed, of course I mean old fly-sheets, from the sixteenth century downward; they are generally of four, sometimes of eight, leaves small octavo. Any information, either personally, or through "N. & Q.," will much oblige
GEORGE STEPHENS.
Copenhagen.