+The Text+ is from a manuscript at Balliol College, Oxford, No. 354,
already referred to in the First Series (p. 80) as supplying a text of
_The Nut-brown Maid_. The manuscript, which is of the early part of the
sixteenth century, has been edited by Ewald Flügel in _Anglia_, vol.
xxvi., where the present ballad appears on pp. 278-9. I have only
modernised the spelling, and broken up the lines, as the ballad is
written in two long lines and a short one to each stanza.
No other text is known to me. The volume of _Anglia_ containing the
ballad was not published till 1903, some five years after Professor
Child's death; and I believe he would have included it in his collection
had he known of it.
+The Story+ narrates the subjugation of a proud lady who scorns all her
wooers, by a juggler who assumes the guise of a knight. On the morrow
the lady discovers her paramour to be a churl, and he is led away to
execution, but escapes by juggling himself into a meal-bag: the dust
falls in the lady's eye.
It would doubtless require a skilled folk-lorist to supply full critical
notes and parallels; but I subjoin such details as I have been able to
collect.
In _The Beggar Laddie_ (Child, No. 280, v. 116) a pretended beggar or
shepherd-boy induces a lassie to follow him, 'because he was a bonny
laddie.' They come to his father's (or brother's) hall; he knocks,
four-and-twenty gentlemen welcome him in, and as many gay ladies attend
the lassie, who is thenceforward a knight's or squire's lady.
In _The Jolly Beggar_ (Child, No. 279, v. 109), which, with the similar
Scottish poem _The Gaberlunzie Man_, is attributed without authority to
James V. of Scotland, a beggar takes up his quarters in a house, and
will only lie behind the hall-door, or by the fire. The lassie rises to
bar the door, and is seized by the beggar. He asks if there are dogs in
the town, as they would steal all his 'meal-pocks.' She throws the
meal-pocks over the wall, saying, 'The deil go with your meal-pocks, my
maidenhead, and a'.' The beggar reveals himself as a braw gentleman.
A converse story is afforded by the first part of the Norse tale
translated by Dasent in _Popular Tales from the Norse_, 1888, p. 39,
under the title of _Hacon Grizzlebeard_. A princess refuses all suitors,
and mocks them publicly. Hacon Grizzlebeard, a prince, comes to woo her.
She makes the king's fool mutilate the prince's horses, and then makes
game of his appearance as he drives out the next day. Resolved to take
his revenge, Hacon disguises himself as a beggar, attracts the
princess's notice by means of a golden spinning-wheel, its stand, and a
golden wool-winder, and sells them to her for the privilege of sleeping
firstly outside her door, secondly beside her bed, and finally in it.
The rest of the tale narrates Hacon's method of breaking down the
princess's pride.