Jamieson cites the first two stanzas of A a in a letter of inquiry to The Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 700, and the first half of D (with alterations) in his preface, Popular Ballads, I, 320. The ballad, he says, is very popular all over Scotland.
Robin has married a wife of too high kin to bake or brew, wash or wring. He strips off a wether's skin and lays it on her back, or prins her in it. He dares not beat her, for her proud kin, but he may beat the wether's skin, and does. This makes an ill wife good.
A fragment in Herd's Manuscripts, I, 105, II, 161, belongs, if not to this ballad, at least to one in which an attempt is made to tame a shrew by castigation.
The story of the ballad was in all likelihood traditionally derived from the good old tale of the wife lapped in Morrel's skin.[foot-note] Here a husband, who has put up with a great deal from an excessively restive wife, flays his old horse Morrell and salts the hide, takes the shrew down cellar, and, after a sharp contest for mastery, beats her with birchen rods till she swoons, then wraps her in the salted hide: by which process the woman is perfectly reformed.[foot-note]
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