B forms the conclusion, as already said, to a beautiful copy of 'The Clerk's Twa Sons o Owsenford,' recited by the grandmother of Robert Chambers.
A motive for the return of the wife's three sons is not found in the fragments which remain to us. The mother had cursed the sea when she first heard they were lost, and can only go mad when she finds that after all she has not recovered them; nor will a little wee while, B 5, make any difference. There is no indication that the sons come back to forbid obstinate grief, as the dead often do. But supplying a motive would add nothing to the impressiveness of these verses. Nothing that we have is more profoundly affecting.
A is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 14; by Freiligrath, Zwischen den Garben, II, 227, ed. Stuttgart, 1877; by Doenniges, p. 61; by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 9, with insertion of B 5, 6; and by Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 227, after Allingham.
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