_To the Editor._
Dear Sir,--A friend of mine, who resided for some years on the borders,
used to amuse himself by collecting old ballads, printed on halfpenny
sheets, and hawked up and down by itinerant minstrels. In his
common-place book I found one, entitled “The Outlandish Knight,”
evidently, from the style, of considerable antiquity, which appears to
have escaped the notice of Percy, and other collectors. Since then I
have met with a printed one, from the popular press of Mr. Pitts, the
six-yards-for-a-penny song-publisher, who informs me that he has printed
it “ever since he was a printer, and that Mr. Marshall, his predecessor,
printed it before him.” The ballad has not improved by circulating
amongst Mr. Pitts’s friends; for the heroine, who has no name given her
in my friend’s copy, is in Mr. Pitts’s called “Polly;” and there are
expressions _contra bonos mores_. These I have expunged; and, to render
the ballad more complete, added a few stanzas, wherein I have
endeavoured to preserve the simplicity of the original, of which I
doubt if a correct copy could now be obtained. As it is, it is at the
service of your _Table Book_.
The hero of the ballad appears to be of somewhat the same class as the
hero of the German ballad, the “Water King,” and in some particulars
resembles the ballad of the “Overcourteous Knight,” in Percy’s Reliques.