Version B was printed for P. Brooksby, who published from 1672 to 1695. It was "allowed" by Roger L'Estrange, who was licenser from 1663 to 1685. The title of B is 'A New Ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. To the Tune of The King and the Lord Abbot.' The older ballad seems not to have come down.
The story is apparently of Oriental origin. The oldest known version was discovered by Professor C.C. Torrey in the Conquest of Egypt, an Arabic historical work of about 850 A.D., and is thought by him to be "a genuine bit of Coptic folk-lore," current in Egypt long before the Arab invasion in the seventh century. In this tale a wicked king gives his vezirs certain questions: if they answer them, he promises to increase their pay; if they fail, he will cut off their heads. They are assisted by a potter, who disguises himself as a vezir and tricks the king (Journal of the American Oriental Society, xx, 209). There are a multitude of other versions, Oriental and Occidental. Among those which resemble the ballad closely may be mentioned the Middle High German tale of Âmîs and the Bishop, in the Strieker's Pfaffe Âmîs (about 1 236) , and the fourth novella of Sacchetti. In the latter we have the prizing of the questioner at twenty-nine deniers, as in the English. Riddle stories in which a forfeit is to be paid by the vanquished party are a very extensive class. The oldest example is that of Samson's riddle in Judges xiv, 12 if. Death is often the penalty, as in the Poetic Edda (Vafprúðnismál).
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