350 NOTES. 14 1. ^<?flk/= death. 24. This is the last member of the attacking party, and, like the slayer of Johnie Armstrong (15 3), he comes behind Earl Brand's back to give the mortal wound. But the oldest form of the ballad doubtless retained a feature found in most of the Scandinavian versions : all will go well if the maid remember the knight's com- mand that she shall not name his name. It is when she sees her youngest brother come to his fate that she calls upon her lover by name, and asks him to have mercy ; thus she brings about the tragedy. There is a touch of this in Scott's version, though father takes the place of youngest brother : She held his steed in her milk-white hand, And never shed one tear, Until that she saw her seven brethren fa'. And her father hard fighting, who lov'd her so dear.
- O hold your hand. Lord William ! ' she said,
- For your strokes they are wondrous sair ;
True lovers I can get many a ane But a father I can never get main' YOUNG HUNTING. See Child, III, 142 ff., printed from Herd's MSS., with the aid of which Scott made up his version, Earl Richard. He added, for example, st. 28 : The maiden touched the clay-cauld corpse, A drap it never bled ; The ladye laid her hand on him, And soon the ground was red, which is the well-known test of a murderer's presence, most familiar to us in Shakspere's Richard Illy i, 2. In our ballad the only test is the trial by fire. 3 1. Has plied him with ale and beer ; literally, * has poured in {i.e, into the cup) for him,' him being the dative case. 5 1. A commonplace of the ballads. 8 3, 4. From G (Child, p. 151). * You shall have a cage of gold instead of a cage of wood.* 12 1. * The deep holes, scooped in the rock by the eddies of a river, are called pots ; the motion of the water having there some resemblance to a boiling caldron.' — Scott, Digitized by LjOOQIC
