+The Text+ is from a broadside in black letter in the Pepysian Library
at Cambridge; bound up at the end of a book published in 1673.
+The Story+ of this ballad but poorly represents the complete form of
the story as exhibited in many German and other ballads, where alternate
bargaining and riddling ensues between a man and a maid. This long
series of ballads is akin to the still longer series in which the person
upon whom an impossible task is imposed is considered to have got the
mastery by retaliating with another impossible task.
The opening stanzas of this ballad correspond closely with those of
_Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight_.