P. 253. It has already been noted that traditional copies of 'The Three Ravens' have been far from infrequent. When a ballad has been nearly three hundred years in print, and in a very impressive form, the chance that traditional copies, differing principally by what they lack, should be coeval and independent amounts at most to a bare possibility. Traditional copies have, however, sometimes been given in this collection on the ground of a very slight chance; and not unreasonably, I think, considering the scope of the undertaking.
The copy which follows was communicated by E.L.K. to Notes and Queries, Eighth Series, II, 437, 1892, and has been sent me lately in Manuscript by Mr. R. Brimley Johnson, of Cambridge, England, with this note:
"From E. Peacock, Esq., F.S.A., of Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsay, Lincolnshire, whose father, born in 1793, heard it as a boy at harvest-suppers and sheep-shearings, and took down a copy from the recitation of Harry Richard, a laborer, who could not read, and had learnt it 'from his fore-elders.' He lived at Northorpe, where a grass-field joining a little stream, called Ea, Ee, and Hay, is pointed out as the scene of the tragedy."
454 a, line 8. Read ravns.
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