John Dory goes to Paris and offers King John, in return for a pardon asked for himself and his men, to bring the French king all the churls in England in bonds. Nicholl, a Cornish man, fits out a good bark, has an encounter with John Dory, and after a smart fight takes him prisoner.
This ballad had a remarkable popularity in the seventeenth century, as is evinced by the numerous cases of its being cited which Chappell has collected, Popular Music, p. 67 f.[foot-note]
As to the history of the transactions set forth in the ballad, I am not aware that anything has been added to the account given by Carew in his Survey of Cornwall, 1602, p. 135, which Ritson has quoted in the second edition of his Ancient Songs, II, 57, an account which is likely to have been taken from the ballad, with the specification from tradition that Nicholl was "son to a widow near Foy."
"Moreover, the prowess of one Nicholas, son to a widow near Foy, is descanted upon in an old three-man's song, namely, how he fought bravely at sea with John Dory (a Genowey, as I conjecture), set forth by John, the French king, and, after much bloodshed on both sides, took, and slew him, in revenge of the great ravine and cruelty which he had fore committed upon the Englishmen's goods and bodies." (Page 316 of the edition of 1813.)
The king in the ballad would be John II, the Good, who was taken prisoner at Poitiers, and died in 1364. No John Doria is mentioned as being in his service.
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