A, a, b, c are broadside or stall copies, a of the end of the seventeenth century, b "modern" in Percy's time, and they differ inconsiderably, except that a has corrupted an important line.[foot-note] Of d, Percy says, Since the first edition some improvements have been inserted, which were communicated by a lady of the first distinction, as she had heard this song repeated in her infancy. Herd, in The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 295, follows Percy. As Percy has remarked, the ballad is twice quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle,' 1611. Stanza 5 runs thus in Act 2, Scene 8, Dyce, II, 170:
The first half of stanza 2 is given, in Act 3, Scene 5, Dyce, p. 196, with more propriety than in the broadsides, thus:
The fifth stanza of the ballad, as cited in 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle,' says the editor of the Reliques, has "acquired an importance by giving birth to one of the most beautiful ballads in our own or any language" [that is, 'Margaret's Ghost'], "the elegant production of David Mallet, Esq., who, in the last edition of his poems, 3 vols, 1759, informs us that the plan was suggested by the four verses quoted above, which he supposed to be the beginning of some ballad now lost."[foot-note] The ballad supposed to be lost has been lately recovered, in a copy of the date 1711, with the title 'William and Margaret, an Old Ballad,' and turns out to be substantially the piece which Mallet published as his own in 1724, Mallet's changes being comparatively slight. 'William and Margaret' is simply 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William' rewritten in what used to be called an elegant style. Nine of the seventeen stanzas are taken up with a rhetorical address of Margaret to false William, who then leaves his bed, raving, stretches himself on Margaret's grave, thrice calls her name, thrice weeps full sore, and dies. See The Roxburghe Ballads, in the Ballad Society's reprint, III, 671, with Mr. Chappell's remarks there, and in the Antiquary, January, 1880. The ballad of 1711 seems to have been founded upon some copy of the popular form earlier than any we now possess, or than any known to me, for the last half of stanza 5 runs nearly as it occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher (see also B 7), thus:
'Fair Margaret and Sweet William' begins like 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' and from the fifth stanza on is blended with a form of that ballad represented by versions E-H. The brown girl, characteristic of 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' has slipped into A 14, 15, B 8, of 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William.' The catastrophe of 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William' is repeated in 'Lord Lovel,' and it will be convenient to notice under the head of the latter, which immediately follows, some ballads out of English which resemble both, especially in the conclusion.
A c is translated by Bodmer, II, 31, Döring, p. 199; A d by Herder, 1778, I, 124, von Marées, p. 40, Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 61.
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