+The Text+ is taken almost entirely from a copy which was sent in 1780
to Bishop Percy by a Miss Fisher of Carlisle; in the last half of the
first stanza her version gives, unintelligibly:
'But little knew he that his bloody hounds
Were bound in iron bands':
and I have therefore substituted lines from a later text. The correction
in 20.1 and 21.1 is also essential.
+The Story+ will be familiar to many as _Johnie of Breadislee_, a title
given by Sir Walter Scott to his version, the first that was published,
in the _Minstrelsy_ (1802). In the present version, however, Johnny
certainly belongs to Cockley's Well, Bradyslee being only the name of
his hunting-ground. In other variants, his name is Johnny Cock, Johnny
Cox, Johnny o' Cockis, o' Cockerslee, of Cockielaw, of Cocklesmuir, or
Johnny Brad. The name of the hunting-ground varies also, though not so
widely; and, as usual, the several editors of the ballad have carefully
noted that its topography (though the nomenclature is corrupted)
connects it with this district or that--Percy's ballad is Northumbrian,
Scott's is of Dumfriesshire.
Percy considered that the mention of wolves (17.1) was an indication of
the antiquity of the ballad; whereupon Child quotes Holinshed (1577) as
saying that 'though the island is void of wolves south of the Tweed, yet
the Scots cannot boast the like, since they have grievous wolves.' Yet
how can one reconcile the mention of wolves with the reference to
'American leather' (13.3)?
Professor Child calls this a 'precious specimen of the unspoiled
traditional ballad,' and Professor Gummere points out that 'it goes with
a burden, this sterling old song, and has traces of an incremental
repetition that has been reduced to lowest terms by impatient
transcribers' (_The Popular Ballad_, p. 268). In his _Old English
Ballads_ Gummere gives a text very ingeniously compounded of Percy's and
Kinloch's; and Professor Brandl has attempted to restore the original
text.