This ballad can have had no currency in Scotland, and perhaps was known only through print. A similar one is strictly traditional in Greece, and widely dispersed, both on the mainland and among' the islands. There are numerous tales in which a man wagers heavily upon a woman's (generally his wife's) constancy, and, upon plausible evidence, which in the end proves to be nugatory, is adjudged to have lost. Such are the Old French Roman de la Violette and Flore et Jehane; Decameron, ii, 9 (repeated in Shakspere's Cymbeline), etc. Only a small section of these stories, however, has the distinctive traits of the Scottish and Romaic ballads. Examples are the thirteenth - century rhymed tale 'Von zwein Kaufmannen' (von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, in, 357) and the Welsh tale of 'Taliesin' in the so-called Mabinogian.
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