One half of A (the second and fourth quarters) is wanting in the Percy Manuscript. B can be traced in Banffshire for more than a hundred years, through the old woman that sang it, and her forbears. What we can gather of the story is this. A knight finds a lady sitting in (or under) a tree, who tells him that a wild boar has slain (or worried) her lord and killed (or wounded) thirty of his men. The knight kills the boar, and seems to have received bad wounds in the process. The boar belonged to a giant, or to a wild woman. The knight is required to forfeit his hawks and leash and the little finger of his right hand (or his horse, his hound, and his lady). He refuses to submit to such disgrace, though in no condition to resist; the giant allows him time to heal his wounds, and he is to leave his lady as security for his return. At the end of the time the knight comes back sound and well, and kills the giant as he had killed the boar. C and D say nothing of the knight having been wounded. The wild woman, to revenge her "pretty spotted pig," flies fiercely at him, and he cleaves her in two. The last quarter of the Percy copy would, no doubt, reveal what became of the lady who was sitting in the tree, as to which traditional copies give no light.
The ballad has much in common with the romance of 'Sir Eglamour of Artois' (Percy Manuscript, Hales and Furnivall, n, 338; Thornton Romances, ed. Halliwell, p. 121). It has also taken up something from the romance of 'Eger and Grime' (Percy Manuscript, I, 341; Laing, Early Metrical Tales, p. 1).
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