Ed de Moel

Child Ballads - Additions and Corrections

5. Gil Brenton

P. 62. In Traditionary Stories of Old Families, by Andrew Picken, 1833, I, 289, 'The Three Maids of Loudon,' occur the following stanzas:

  Seven pretty sisters dwelt in a bower,
      With a hey-down, and a ho-down
And they twined the silk, and they workd the flower.
      Sing a hey-down and a ho-down
  And they began for seven years' wark,
      With a hey-down and a ho-down
All for to make their dear loves a sark.
      With a hey down and a ho-down
  O three long years were passd and gone,
      With a hey-down and a ho-down
And they had not finishd a sleeve but one.
      With a hey down and a ho-down
  'O we'll to the woods, and we'll pull a rose,'
      With a hey-down and a ho-down
And up they sprang all at this propose.
      With a hey down and a ho-down
(W. Macmath.)

P. 6 7. What is said of the bilwiz must be understood of the original conception. Grimm notes that this sprite, and others, lose their friendly character in later days and come to be regarded as purely malicious. See also E. Mogk in Paul's Grundriss der germ. Philologie, I, 1019.

72. Splendid ships. See also Richard Coer de Lion, 60-72, Weber's Metrical Romances, II, 5 f.; Mélusine, II, 438 f.

Some of the French ships prepared for the invasion of England in 1386 had the masts from foot to cap covered with leaves of fine gold: Froissart, ed. Buchon, X, 169. King Henry the Eighth in 1544 passed the seas in a ship with sails of cloth of gold: Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth, 1649, p. 513. When Thomas Cavendish went up the Thames in 1589, his seamen and soldiers were clothed in silk, his sails were of damask, "his top-masts cloth of gold." Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Q. Elizabeth, 1754, I, 57.

To be Corrected in the Print.

62, 68. A. The Jamieson-Brown Manuscript should be cited by pages, not by folios. This correction applies also to Nos 6 b, 10 B, a, 32 a, 34 B, a, 35, 53, A, C, a, 62 E, 63 B, a, 65 A, 76 D, 82, 96 A, 97 A, a, 98 A, 99 A, 101 A, 103 A.

69 b, 611. Read rauked.

To be Corrected in the Print.

447 b, note to 5, after st. 17. Read in a.

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