P. 1 a, VI, 496 a. Guess or die. Kristensen, Jyske Folkeminder, X, 2, 'Svend Bondes Spergsmaal,' B.
3-5. From Miss M.H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs, p. 31; sung in Northumberland.
Findlay's Manuscripts, I, 151, from J. Milne.
P. 1. Rawlinson Manuscript D. 328, fol. 174b., Bodleian Library.
I was unaware of the existence of this very important copy until it was pointed out to me by my friend Professor Theodor Vetter, of Zürich, to whom I have been in other ways greatly indebted. It is from a book acquired by Walter Pollard, of Plymouth, in the 23d year of Henry VI, 1444-5, and the handwriting is thought to authorize the conclusion that the verses were copied into the book not long after. The parties are the fiend and a maid, as in C, D, which are hereby evinced to be earlier than A, B. The "good ending" of A, B, is manifestly a modern perversion, and the reply to the last question in A, D, 'The Devil is worse than eer woman was,' gains greatly in point when we understand who the so-called knight really is. We observe that in the fifteenth century version, 12, the fiend threatens rather than promises that the maid shall be his: and so in E, V, 205.
['Inter Diabolus et Virgo' is printed by Dr. Furnivall in Englische Studien, XXIII, 444, 445, March, 1897.]
P. 2 f., 484 a, II, 495 a, IV, 439 a. Slavic riddle-ballads. Add: Romanov, I, 420, No 163 (White Russian).
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