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Collectanea.
O'^O
the variants of a ballad, it is not impossible to imagine a case in which only those versions survive in which the displacement of the earlier hero has taken place. Therefore to consider a ballad's origin or date from evidence such as that to which I have referred, is not always conclusive ; for it is the action or plot that gives to the ballad its place in a comparative setting, and not merely the accidental circumstances of place or person which, whether through literary influence or through a process of localisation, it may possess.
Joseph J. MacSweeney.
Bailey, Howth, Co. Dublin.
