'King Estmere' occurred at page 249 of Percy's folio manuscript, but the three leaves on which it was written were "unfortunately torn out" by Percy to send to the press, and the genuine form of the ballad was thereby put beyond recovery.
We are told by Percy in a note to stanza 63, that though liberties have been taken with that portion of the ballad which follows, yet wherever the fourth edition differs from the preceding ones it has been brought nearer to the folio. Some notes of readings of the folio are also furnished in the fourth edition (and are here restored) which were not given in the others. While we cannot but be vexed that so distinguished a ballad, not injured much, so far as we can see, by time, should not come down to us as it came to Percy, our loss must not be exaggerated. The changes made by the editor, numerous enough, no doubt, cannot be very material until we approach the end. Stanzas 63-66 are entirely suspicious.
'King Estmere' resembles in a general way a series of German poems in which a young king (or his guardians) is nice about a wife, and the princess proposed to him is won only with great difficulty: Omit, Hugdietrich, Oswald, Orendel, Dietwart (in Dietrichs Flucht). The names of Adler and Estmere appear again in a short romance in the Percy manuscript (Hales and Furnivall, II, 296), in which the story is that of Hugdietrich in the Heldenbuch.
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