The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 5 (of 5)

In Short

This volume forms the grand, meticulous conclusion to Francis James Child’s monumental collection of popular traditional ballads from England and Scotland. Containing the final forty texts (Numbers 266 to 305) alongside an extensive apparatus of additions, corrections, a comprehensive glossary, and an exhaustive index of titles, it presents the raw material of folk narrative in its unvarnished state. Within these pages, knights wager their estates on a wife’s fidelity, treacherous lovers summon deadly vipers, spectral grooms carry sweethearts across fifty miles of night, and resourceful maidens matching wits with suitors are saved at the eleventh hour. Rather than offering a single unified plot, the book records the final, varied echoes of a centuries-old oral tradition. It has endured because it remains the bedrock of traditional English-language folk scholarship, capturing the gritty, haunting, and often absurd truths of human desire, betrayal, and supernatural dread.

The Story

The book opens with Child’s account of his tireless, decades-long search for authentic traditional texts. Facing delays caused by ill health and the arduous pursuit of elusive manuscripts, he finally secures access to the long-sought papers of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe—including an old lady’s complete set of ballads that provided the foundation for early Scottish collections. With these acquisitions, Child completes his survey of every known written and recited source of English and Scottish balladry.

What follows is the final sequence of narrative ballads, which moves through distinct emotional landscapes. The narrative arc begins in the courtly yet treacherous world of domestic wagers and tested chastity. In The Twa Knights, a knight and a squire make a dangerous bet on a wife's virtue, pitting the knight’s ancestral lands against the squire’s life. When the husband sails abroad, the squire bribing and plotting through a false foster-mother attempts to force himself upon the lady. Through sharp presence of mind, she sends her niece to the squire’s bed in her place. The squire cuts off the niece’s ring-finger as proof of his victory, but when the husband returns and casts off his wife as unfaithful, the lady demands a public showing in the light, exposing the severed finger, vindicating her honor, and forcing the truth into the open.

From domestic intrigue, the narrative shifts toward chivalric romance and hidden identity. In the tale of Roswall and Lillian, a young prince known only as Dissawar lives disguised as a humble hunter. When the princess Lillian is pressed to marry a treacherous steward, three mysterious knights in white, red, and gold armor appear to equip Roswall for three days of jousting. Unseating his rivals and breaking the steward's ribs, Roswall conceals his identity until the wedding feast, where three foreign lords enter and refuse to pay homage to the false bridegroom. Roswall is revealed as the true prince, the wicked steward is sent to the gallows that very day, and the true lovers are united in celebration.

The mood darkens as the collection moves into the realm of supernatural horror and tragic retribution. In The Suffolk Miracle, a young man dies of grief after being separated from his sweetheart by her wealthy father. A month after his burial, his spectre appears on horseback, carrying the maiden forty miles through the night. Complaining of a headache, he lets her tie a handkerchief around his brow before he vanishes into the earth. When her terrified family digs up the grave, they discover his body turning to mold, with the living girl’s handkerchief tied firmly around his corpse’s head—a frightful revelation that drives the maiden to die of grief shortly after. In another dark ballad, a vengeful queen tricks young Troy Muir into lifting a heavy stone in a garden, releasing a starved serpent that coils tightly around his waist. A heroic maiden saves him by cutting off her own breast to feed the beast, and by divine grace her wound heals within an hour, leading to their immediate marriage.

Tragedy gives way to family blood-feuds and brutal cycles of revenge. In one ballad, the villainous Hind Henry ambushes a young mother riding through the greenwood, running his cold steel sword through her side because she loved Brown Robin instead of him. A faithful boy rescues her newborn child from the blood and raises him to manhood. Years later, playing in the forest, the young boy notices a single bare patch of earth where no leaves will grow. When Hind Henry reveals that it is the exact spot where he murdered the boy’s mother, the young Robin pulls his dagger and drives it through the killer’s heart.

As the text draws toward its close, the high drama gives way to earthy, satirical comedy and street broadsides. Our Goodman portrays a gullible, cuckolded husband who returns home night after night to find another man’s horse, sword, wig, and boots. His cunning wife mockingly insists they are merely a milch-cow, a porridge-spurtle, a clocken-hen, and a pair of blankets sent by her mother, leaving the husband to marvel at milk-cows wearing saddles and maids with long beards. In The Hangman’s Tree, a maiden stands beneath the gallows pleading for time as her father, mother, and siblings arrive empty-handed merely to watch her swing, until her true love rides up with the gold required to buy her freedom.

Finally, the narrative narrative arc transitions into the scholarly aftermath. The book culminates in a vast, systematic array of critical tools: an extensive glossary detailing archaic regional dialects, comprehensive additions and corrections to previous volumes, and exhaustive indices. The collection concludes with an academic essay evaluating Child’s monumental life work, sealing the boundary between the oral world of traditional song and the written realm of modern literature.

How It Unfolds

The search for lost manuscripts Professor Child recounts the persistent delays and scholarly triumphs involved in obtaining Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s private papers. Through the aid of devoted collectors, long-lost ballad transcripts and recitation sets are restored to the public record.

Wagers of land and honor A knight bets his ancestral estates against a squire's life that his wife will remain faithful while he is across the sea. The squire uses bribery and deceit to entrap the lady, but she clever substitutes her niece in the dark, laying a trap that later exposes the squire’s fraud.

The knight in golden armor A disguised prince living as a humble hunter receives secret aid from three magical knights he once freed from prison. He sweeps three successive days of wedding jousts, shaming a villainous steward and winning the hand of Princess Lillian.

The phantom rider's return A grieving lover returns from the grave a month after his death to ride off into the night with his sweetheart. The unearthing of his corpse—found buried with her tied handkerchief—confirms his spectral visit and breaks the maiden’s heart.

The serpent's release A jealous queen deceives a noble youth into lifting a garden stone, unleashing a starved snake upon him. A courageous maiden saves his life through a dramatic sacrifice, gaining both instant healing and a noble husband.

Blood on the greenwood leaves Hind Henry slays a young mother in the forest out of bitter jealousy, leaving her baby in her blood. Years later, her grown son discovers the unhallowed, barren spot where she died and strikes his mother's killer dead with a dagger.

The gullible cuckold A suspicious husband finds foreign boots, weapons, and men inside his house, but his deceitful wife easily turns his questions aside with absurd explanations. He departs muttering over the absurdity of milking-maids who wear long beards.

Ransom at the gallows tree A condemned maiden watches her relatives arrive one by one at the execution site, each refusing to pay her fee. Just as hope fades, her sweetheart arrives with the necessary gold to save her life.

The scholar’s ledger The work shifts into an exhaustive linguistic catalog, defining centuries of obscure, regional vocabulary from bidene to yett-pin. Detailed indices track every known variant, manuscript lineage, and continental parallel across European folklore.

The People

• Francis James Child: The meticulous, unyielding editor whose life work is represented here. Driven by a passion for preservation, he obsessively hunts down lost broadsides, privately held manuscripts, and oral recitations to ensure no authentic scrap of balladry is lost to time.
• The Lady (in The Twa Knights): A woman of remarkable composure and swift intellect. Facing sexual extortion and betrayal by her own foster-mother, she engineers a clever nocturnal substitution and uses a missing finger to publicly redeem her virtue and expose her attacker.
• The Squire (in The Twa Knights): A cynical, ruthless rogue who believes every woman has a price. He wagers his life against his friend's land, uses bribery to assault the lady, and lies to claim a landless victory until his deceit is dramatically unmasked.
• Roswall (Dissawar): A banished young prince of noble instinct and quiet restraint. Bound by a strict oath, he accepts humble work, hides his martial prowess, and fights anonymously in jousts until justice demands he reveal his true royal identity.
• Lillian: A determined princess who refuses to accept an forced marriage to a cowardly steward. She sees through Roswall’s humble disguise, urges him to speak, and boldly confronts her father to demand the man she truly loves.
• The Spectre Groom (in The Suffolk Miracle): A tragic lover who dies of a broken heart after being separated from his love. Bound to her beyond the grave, his corpse rises to claim one final, terrifying ride through the dark.
• May Young Roe's Son (Brown Robin): A young man driven by natural instinct and filial duty. Growing up in the shadow of his mother's tragic murder, he discovers the unholy spot of her death and delivers swift, merciless justice to her killer.
• Hind Henry: A bitter, violent outlaw who slays May Young Roe in cold blood simply because she rejected his love. His arrogance leads him to brag about his crime to the victim's son, bringing about his own fatal retribution.
• The Suspicious Husband (in Our Goodman): A foolish, easily manipulated spouse who trusts his eyes over his wife's outrageous excuses, continually baffled by the absurdities he observes.

In Its Own Voice

When the true lover returns from beyond the grave to claim his sweetheart, the eerie mystery of his physical condition reveals itself in silent horror:

Affrighted then they did behold His body turning into mould, And though he had a month been dead, This kercheif was about his head.

In the forest, a young boy confronts the strange, desolate patch of earth where vegetation refuses to grow:

‘I wonder very sair That all the wood is clad with leaves, And this one spot is bare.’

When a condemned maiden stands beneath the executioner's beam, she pleads for a final reprieve as her relative rides into view:

‘Hangman, hangman, howd yo hand, O howd it wide and far! For theer I see my feyther coomin, Riding through the air.’

What It's Really About

Beneath its archaic phrasing and variable rhymes, this final volume is fundamentally concerned with the preservation of human memory against time, mortality, and betrayal. The ballads function as emotional artifacts, capturing how ordinary folk understood fundamental human experiences: the fragility of female honor, the inevitability of blood-retribution, and the terrifying thinness of the boundary between the living and the dead.

Power dynamics dominate these pages. Wealthy fathers sever true love, forcing young people into fatal despair; treacherous stewards abuse their authority over helpless princes; and powerful queens use dark trickery to punish suitors who reject their advances. Yet, against these abuses of power, the ballads set a crude, poetic justice. Truth is rarely suppressed forever. Whether through a severed finger shown in the light, a barren spot in the greenwood that remembers a murder, or a corpse rising from its grave bearing a silk handkerchief, the hidden act always comes to light.

Ultimately, Professor Child’s editorial apparatus reinforces this theme of preservation. By cataloging every regional phrase, dialect variation, and manuscript source, the volume acts as a fortress against historical forgetting. It argues that these rough, unsophisticated verses carry as much cultural weight as formal epic poetry, preserving the collective voice of generations that would otherwise be lost to history.

Why Read It Today

Reading this collection is an immersive, untamed experience. It does not feel like reading a polished work of modern literature; rather, it feels like sitting near a hearth in a drafty room while forgotten voices sing of blood, magic, and heartbreak. The narrative pace is swift and relentless, dropping the reader directly into moments of life-or-death drama without tedious setup or moralizing.

However, modern readers must be prepared for real difficulties. The text makes no concessions to easy reading. It is dense with Middle English, Early Modern English, and broad lowland Scots dialects ("kipeng nout", "spindels an forls", "brawly buskit"). Many stanzas contain broken lines, corrupt phrasing, or missing fragments. Furthermore, the volume reflects the brutal, stark realities of its historical origins, featuring casual violence, forced marriages, and harsh period attitudes toward women and social class.

Despite these obstacles, the book holds immense value for:

• Folklorists and cultural historians seeking the primary source materials of Anglo-Scottish oral tradition.
• Poets and writers looking for stark, unadorned narrative rhythms and evocative imagery.
• Lovers of traditional music and balladry who want to trace modern songs back to their earliest known variations.

What stays with you after closing the book is its haunting atmosphere. Long after the formal rhymes end, you remember the image of a dead man riding through the dark with a kerchief tied around his head, a single bare spot in a lush green forest, and the haunting cry of a girl beneath the hangman's tree. It is a vital record of how our ancestors sang their fears, their jokes, and their deepest griefs into the dark.