Recordings & Info 296. Walter Lesly
[There are no recordings listed in the Child Collection Index.]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 3925: Walter Lesly (3 Listings)
Alternate Titles
Unknown
Traditional Ballad Index: Walter Lesly [Child 296]
DESCRIPTION: Walter Lesly invites the girl to drink. He then makes off with her; he intends to marry her (for her money). But he falls asleep before she does, and she escapes. She outruns his men and makes her way home.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: 1828 (Buchan)
KEYWORDS: courting abduction escape money
FOUND_IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES: (2 citations)
Child 296, "Walter Lesly" (1 text)
Leach, pp. 680-682, "Walter Lesly" (1 text)
Roud #3925
CROSS_REFERENCES:
cf. "Eppie Morrie" [Child 223] (plot)
NOTES: There was a Walter Leslie who married the heiress of the Earldom of Ross in the reign of David II of Scotland; he was involved in many political quarrels in the reign of the next king, Robert II, and died in 1382. Another Walter Lesley was a crusader in this period. There is no reason to connect either with the villain of this piece except similarity of names (and, of course, the fact that there was a lot of this sort of thing in the anarchic Scotland of Robert II)
For a song with similar plot, and notes on actual historical instances of this sort of abduction-for-money, see the notes to "Eppie Morrie" [Child 223]. - RBW