This fine ballad was printed in the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, III, 48, ed. of 1765, "with considerable corrections." The information given by a page, the reward promised and the alternative punishment threatened him, the savage vengeance taken on the lady and the immediate remorse, are repeated in 'Little Musgrave,' No 81. So the "Sleep you, wake you" of 4 2, a frequent formula for such occasions,[foot-note] which we find in 'Earl Brand,' No 7, D 1, 'King Arthur and King Cornwall,' No 30, st. 493; 'Clerk Saunders,' No 69, F 4; 'Willie and Lady Maisry,' No 70, B 2, 11; 'The Bent Sae Brown,' No 71, st. 5; 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' No 73, E 5; 'Sweet William's Ghost,' No 77, B 2; 'Jellon Grame,' A 4; 'The Drowned Lovers,' Buchan, 1, 140, st. 11; 'Jock o the Side,' Caw's Museum, st. 16; 'Kinmont Willie,' Scott, st. 35; 'The Baron of Brackley,' Scarce Ancient Ballads, st. 2; the song or ballad in 'King Lear,' in, 6, 40; Ravenscroft's Pammelia, 1609, No 30; the interlude of 'The Four Elements' (Steevens); Íslenzk Fornkvæði, II, 115, st. 26, 27; 'Der todte Freier,' Erk's Liederhort, p. 75, No 24a, Deutsches Museum, 1852, II, 167 = Mittler No 545, Wunderhorn, IV, 73, etc., and Deutsches Museum, 1862, II, 803, No 10; Ampère, Instructions, p. 36; Coussemaker, No 48, st. 5; Kolberg, Pieśni ludu Polskiego, No 7e, st. 8; etc.
Old Robin, instead of attaching a cross of red cloth to the right shoulder of his coat or cloak, shapes the cross in his shoulder "of white flesh and of red," st. 32; that is, burns the cross in with a hot iron, as was done sometimes by the unusually devout or superstitious, or for a pious fraud: Mabillon, Annales, ad annum 1095, cited by Michaud, Histoire des Croisades, I, 110, note, ed. 1825.
Translated by Bodmer, I, 153; by Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 66.
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