Bluegrass Messengers

The "Johnny Collins" Version of Lady Alice- Bayard

The "Johnny Collins" Version of Lady Alice
by Samuel P. Bayard
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 58, No. 228 (Apr. - Jun., 1945), pp. 73-103

THE "JOHNNY COLLINS" VERSION OF LADY ALICE
By SAMUEL P. BAYARD

The ballad of Lady Alice (Child No. 85) has not received much attention from students of traditional song. Its rather slight plot, the relative insignificance of its best known American form, and the undistinguished language of all its versions have probably made historical inquiries seem hardly worth while. Professor Child accorded it only slender notice in his great edition of ballad verse, [1] and since his time ballad scholars generally have done likewise. But since that day also two other quite distinct versions of the piece have come to light-neither of them, apparently, ever known to Child. One of these "new" versions especially-current in both England and America -possesses features which cry out for explanation and consequently demand a more detailed examination of the ballad's whole content and meaning. Such an investigation is the object of the present study.

Before attacking the questions raised by this special version, however, it is desirable to quote one of the ordinary forms in order to have a text at hand for comparison. For this purpose I have chosen Child's version C: [2]

1. Giles Collin he said to his mother one day,
"Oh, mother, come bind up my head!
For tomorrow morning before it is day
I'm sure I shall be dead."

2. "Oh, mother, oh, mother, if I should die,
And I am sure I shall,
I will not be buried in our churchyard.
But under Lady Alice's wall."

3. His mother she made him some water-gruel,
And stirred it up with a spoon;
Giles Collin he ate but one spoonful,
And died before it was noon.

4. Lady Alice was sitting in her window,
All dressed in her night-coif;
She saw as pretty a corpse go by
As ever she'd seen in her life.

5. "What bear ye there, ye six tall men?
What bear ye on your shourn?"
"We bear the body of Giles Collin,
Who was a true lover of yourn."

6. "Down with him, down with him, upon the grass,
The grass that grows so green;
For tomorrow morning before it is day
My body shall lie by him."

7. Her mother she made her some plum-gruel,
With spices all of the best;
Lady Alice she ate but one spoonful,
And the doctor he ate up the rest.

8. Giles Collin was laid in the lower chancel,
Lady Alice all in the higher;
There grew up a rose from Lady Alice's breast,
And from Giles Collin's a briar.

9. And they grew, and they grew, to the very church-top.
Until they could grow no higher,
And twisted and twined in a true-lover's knot,
Which made all the parish admire.

I believe that this text represents adequately the common English version of Lady Alice. A few variations in other texts add nothing to the story, nor do they make any changes of importance. This version nearly always gives its hero the name of Giles Collins; hence I shall refer to it as the "Giles Collins" type.

Another version, more widely known at present than the one just quoted, names the hero George. This "George Collins" form of the ballad-the common American form-alters the story considerably. It tells how George Collins rides home "so fine," then takes sick and dies. His true love (usually called Eleanor, Ellen or Mary, as against the Alice, Anna and Annis of the "Giles
Collins" form) learns of his death and utters a lament for him. Here this version ends-being obviously incomplete in modern tradition, and lacking an account of the heroine's death. Usually, also, some floating lines and stanzas which frequently occur in "The Turtle Dove" and allied folk-lyrics find place in texts of this version as parts of the lady's lament. [3]

Notwithstanding its incompleteness, intrusive lyric elements, and other evidences of being at the frayed-out end of a tradition, the "George Collins" version is plainly a serious composition. Most variants of the "Giles Collins" form, on the other hand, have the appearance of degeneration into comic songs. They generally contain absurd cliches and trivialities that sound badly
out of place in a tragic ballad. Probably the burlesque elements result from broadside writers' meddling, for Professor Child states that the "Giles Collins" type was "still of the regular stock of the stalls." [4] While this form has not flourished among folk singers in America, the more purely traditional and quite serious "George Collins" type has become our most widely known version of the ballad. [5]

Due to its brevity and general unimportance, the "George Collins" version needs no quotation. Far different is the case with our third version-the one which is the particular cause and subject of this inquiry. In this extraordinary form of the piece, the hero's name again changes; in all but two texts it is Johnny. And the "Johnny Collins" version likewise has every appearance of
being "straight tradition," while, like the "George Collins" form (to which it seems more closely allied than to the British version quoted at the beginning), it evinces composition and transmission in a serious vein. The text given herewith, from my own collection, is the fullest and best preserved of any known to me:

JOHNNY COLLINS
Sung in the 1930's by Mrs. Elizabeth Brookover at Daybrook, Monongalia County, West Virginia.

I. As Collins was walking the fields one day
All dressed in white linen so fine,
He spied a maiden, a pretty fair maid,
A-washing a marble-white stone.

2. She wrung her hands and tore her hair,
She waved with a lily-white hand,
Saying, Collins, dear Collins, come quickly here-
Your life is soon to an end!

3. She threw both arms around his neck,
She kissed both his cheeks and his chin,
Till the stars from heaven come twinkling down
On the banks where Collins jumped in.

4. He swam, he swam, he swam once more,
He swam to his own father's door,
Crying, Father, dear father, please let me in,
Please let me in once more!

5. If I should die this very night,
Which I think in my own heart I will,
Go bury me down by the marble-white stone
At the foot of fair Ellender's hill.

6. Fair Ellen was sitting in her parlor next day,
All dressed in her silk so fine,
When she spied a coffin a-coming that way:
'Twas the finest she ever had seen.

7. Whose coffin, whose coffin, whose coffin? cried she;
'Tis the finest I ever have seen.
Johnny Collins, and his cold corpse lies here,
No more a true lover to me!

8. Go bring him in and set him down,
And open his coffin so fine,
Till I take the last kiss from his clay-cold lips,
For Collins has ofttimes kissed mine.

9. Go bring me in a snowy-white sheet
Till I trim it in roses so fine;
Today it'll wave over Collins's grave,
But tomorrow it'll wave over mine.

10. The news was spread over Douglas's town,
And wailed in at Douglas's gate,
And fair Ellender died, she died that night-
'Twas all for Collins's sake.

This peculiar version of Lady Alice has been found in a comparatively small number of variants which agree closely in all essential details. It seems to be much less widely known than the "George Collins" type, [6] and the facts about its distribution are as curious as its contents. Only one variant (in two fragments) has been found so far in England; all the others known to me turned up in America, and were collected in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. [7] Furthermore, not a single variant of this version-undoubtedly the most important in the history of the ballad-was discovered before the present century. The two English fragments were the earliest recorded. The American variants include seven in my own collection, all written down in
southwestern Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia, where this version of Lady Alice appears to be the only one known.  [8]

Not one of these three versions of Lady Alice offers at first scrutiny a satisfactory reason for the hero's death. The "George Collins" type, indeed, has him simply take sick and die; but this version is obviously broken down a fact plainly revealed by comparison with the other two forms. The common English "Giles Collins" form usually gives no cause at all for his dying.
Two variants of this form[9] ignore his adventures completely, and commence at the point where Lady Alice sees his corpse go by. In the other texts he announces his imminent death suddenly to his mother, and dies just as quickly as he had foretold. One text only[10] makes the pallbearers say in answer to Lady Anna's question, "We bear the body of Giles Collins Who for
love of you did die." Comparing this with Collins' request to have his head bound, and his burial not in the churchyard, but under the lady's wall, we might think that we have found the solution of the matter. Collins' burial directions look like evidence of real devotion, and binding the head to relieve love-sickness is a conventional feature found elsewhere in English folksong. [11]

But this ballad cannot be interpreted simply as a variation of the theme of Barbara Allan, nor yet as a counterpart to Lord Lovel, as Child considered it.[12] In the first place, there is more than one possible reason for Collins' wish to have his head bound;'" and as for his injunction regarding his burial, I cannot find a variant in which it is obeyed. Instead, a common ballad convention intervenes at this point, and usually has Giles and his truelove buried in one church, with the familiar love-animated plants growing out of their graves.

Furthermore, as I shall point out in connection with the "Johnny Collins" type of the ballad, we do not know, despite appearances, that the Lady Alice under whose wall he wishes to lie is the same person as the maiden who later dies for his sake. Also, there is not a line in the ballad to suggest that Collins' love was unrequited; for evidently his truelove does not suspect his fate until she sees his corpse, and in the account of her grief and death there is no remorse expressed for any mistreatment of him. Indeed, in the "Johnny Collins" version, she begs the last kiss from his lips, and in all versions she declares that she also will die soon from grief.

It is true that these utterances are familiar ballad formulae; but we need not think that the events recounted are meaningless because they happen to be couched in such language. Conventional phrases and stanzas in balladry have been manufactured (or evolved) to express basic themes in traditional narrative, and are used in the situations where they fit. [14] The question that gives trouble here is, How far are we to trust the conventional lines to convey the meaning of a story so briefly told and sketchily outlined as this? Apparently we can do little more than accept the formulae as we find them, and by comparing them try to ascertain just what evidence they do present toward the explanation of obscure parts of the narrative. And, in spite of the
line in Child's B-version about Collins' having died of love, the evidence seems clear, in the first place, that Lady Alice did not scorn him: the context of all three versions of the ballad makes that plain. In the second place, all versions (in every text containing an account of Collins' death) clearly state or imply that his death was sudden and quite unexpected. Therefore, this single line cannot be taken seriously as an explanation of the event. It must be a later feature, like the narration of their double burial in the church-a formulaic addition made after the real cause of the tragedy was forgotten. And indeed the abruptness with which Collins reveals his "fey" feeling, together with the quickness with which that feeling is justified, make us think that
there was some cause for his death which has been lost sight of in the tradition of this ballad.

So far I have discussed the third ("Johnny Collins") version of Lady Alice only in passing because its special features need special attention. It is the fullest of all forms of the ballad. On the questions just argued its testimony is clear: the hero's death comes suddenly and unexpectedly and is certainly not due to unrequited affection. Moreover, the entire first half of the "Johnny
Collins" form deals with the adventures of Collins before his death-a part of the ballad which the "George" and "Giles" forms do not hint at, and which could never possibly be inferred from any of their details. Naturally, then, we look to the first stanzas of "Johnny Collins" for light on the cause of his fate; but here we are confronted by a series of events more mystifying than ever. Instead of giving an answer to the question of how Collins comes to die, this version raises a number of new questions.

For example, why should the maid who appears in the opening stanza be washing a marble-white stone? Why, also, should she express such grief at seeing Collins (grief portrayed, as usual, by some of the common formulae of British balladry), [15] and call him "dear Collins" or "my dear" when their meeting, to all appearances, is perfectly casual? How is she able to prophesy
his speedy death? And why, after this prophecy, should she make love to him, or-as it happens in most of the texts-should he make love to her (a still more puzzling action)?[16] In addition, why should Collins at this point leap into the water by the side of which, we assume, the fair maid is washing? His swimming home is a feature which must surely be due to text-corruption;
but of the "Johnny Collins" texts which contain this stanza all but two make him swim to get back home. [17]

We arrive at Collins' prophecy of his immediate death-which remains as mystifying as ever, although there is now no doubt that it is connected in some way with the fair maid. But a new question arises even here: why should Collins want to be buried at the very white stone where he met the seeress and heard her prophecy? For now it is evidently not a question of burial by
his truelove's wall, but at a stone, by a piece of water, and under a hill-the hill being mentioned in the same casual way in which the water had been called to our attention earlier. At this point in the British variant the hero wishes to be buried by fair Helen's hall. The substitution of hall for hill in this one text must certainly be due to textual re-creation for the sake of restoring
the rhyme; for there is no question but that Collins, in all variants but one which lacks the first stanza, [18] meets the prophetic maid in the countryside at a stone by a piece of water. And the stone again occurs in the British rendering of his last wish:

For if I chance to die this night,
As I suppose I shall,
Bury me under that marble stone
That's against fair Helen's hall. [19]

There is no other mention of a hall by the stone in any of the texts. All the others say hill, and five of them specify green hill-a description which, if it is not entirely conventional, may possibly be of some significance. [20] When we review the "Johnny Collins" version with these questions in mind, we see that although it tells more than the other forms of Lady Alice it by no means makes the whole story plain. Evidently some elements have been suppressed, certainly some are obscured. But corruption cannot explain all the strange features of this version. All the texts but four which are fragmentary have these events in the same sequence, and they show great closeness of detail to the one quoted fully above. This inquiry aims to find answers to the questions raised by this curious version; and if the answers have to be in part conjectural, the present state of the texts themselves amply explains why that must be so.

None of the questions can be tackled, however, until one essential matter is settled. It is truly a problem which exists because of the present rather garbled state of the texts; but luckily the texts also happen to preserve the means of solving it. The British variant just quoted makes Collins ask to be buried by the stone "against fair Helen's hall." Then the variant proceeds:

Fair Helen doth sit in her room so fine,
Working her silken skein,
When she saw the finest corpse a-coming
That ever the sun shined on.

In tHis way, according to the ballad reading, fair Helen, the maid who dies of grief for Collins, is apparently identified with the maid at the stone who foretells his death. This reading, or one very similar, occurs in all the texts save three, which are defective and lack the lines in question.[21] Furthermore, although the full text of "Johnny Collins" quoted above describes the
woman at the stone simply as a fair maid (which four others do also, including the British variant), several texts call her Ellen or Eleanor in their initial stanzas. [22] This makes it appear that Collins' faithful truelove is the same person whom he met by the stone on the day he died; and from my own inquiries I am sure that at least some of the present-day singers of the ballad understand the matter so.

This cannot be the case, however. Johnny Collins' adventures in the first half of the ballad are sufficiently wild as it is; but if the woman at the stone be the same personage who afterwards dies of grief on hearing of the fulfillment of her own prediction, the whole ballad is utterly senseless. This identity of names cannot disguise the fact that the woman at the stone and fair Ellen
are two different persons. The woman at the stone knows that Collins is doomed to die, and tells him so-showing sorrow as she prophesies, in nearly all the variants.[23] On the other hand, word of his death comes as unexpectedly to fair Ellen in this version as it does to Lady Alice and Miss Mary in the "Giles" and "George" types of the ballad respectively. Fair Ellen is discovered sitting calmly at home sewing when the funeral procession goes by, and her very servants know more about the tragedy than she:

She said unto her Irish maid,
Whose corpse is this so fine?
That is George Collins's corpse a-coming,
That once was a true lover of thine. [24]

Only after hearing these tidings does fair Ellen express sorrow, beg for a last kiss, and predict that she too will die the next day. We can make yet other inferences about the woman at the stone. It seems that those who sing this ballad today have reason enough to confuse her with fair Ellen, and to call her Collins' "own true love." [25] For she knows his name; she addresses him as "dear Collins" or "my dear;" and when she calls him he runs at once to embrace her. Finally, when dying, he asks to be buried by the stone where he had met her a short time before. It is perfectly plain, since Collins is on such familiar terms with her, that this meeting between them is not the first; and we have our choice of two conclusions about their relations: namely, that Collins has abandoned fair Ellen for her sake, or else that he has two trueloves and has been deceiving them both. From what evidence the texts afford, either explanation would appear equally reasonable; but assuredly neither helps to explain the actions of Collins and the woman at there last interview (washing the stone, the leap into the water, and so forth). Nor does either interpretation throw any light on the woman's prophecy and the reason for Collins' death. There is nothing strange about fair Ellen, but the woman at the stone is a wholly mysterious character. She knows all about Collins' death before it occurs, yet from the moment when she and he part we hear nothing more concerning her. We must discover with greater certainty who she is before the ballad story can be made intelligible. The first record of this "Johnny Collins" version was printed in the Journal of the Folk Song Society for 1909.[26] In the following volume of the Journal appears a note on the version by Miss Barbara M. Cra'ster," who suggests that the woman at the stone is a fte, and thus sets down the elements of the ballad as she interprets its meaning:

(1) Collins's meeting with a maiden by a stream, the maiden being evidently of a supernatural character.
(2) His return home and death as a result of the meeting.
(3) His truelove's realization of the tragedy through the sight of his coffin, and her own consequent death.

Miss Cra'ster states correctly that all the stock versions of Giles Collins omit incident (I) entirely, thus giving no reason for the man's death, while some are still further reduced, and contain only incident (3).[28]

I have tried to show from the internal evidence of the texts themselves that no version of Lady Alice sufficiently accounts for Collins' death; and if Miss Cra'ster had stopped here, I think we should be obliged to admit that whether the maid at the stone was supernatural or not there still remained a good deal of mystery about both the reason for his death and the manner in which he was killed. But Miss Cra'ster then points out that these incidents of the "Johnny Collins" version correspond to the plot of Clerk Colvill (Child No. 42), and suggests that the two ballads may be really the same, or spring from a common source.

To assess the value of her suggestion we must turn to the ballad of Clerk Colvill, of which I quote Child's A-version in full: [29]

1. Clark Colven and his gay ladie,
As they walked to yon garden green,
A belt about her middle gimp,
Which cost Clark Colven crowns fifteen:

2. "O hearken weel now, my good lord,
O hearken weel to what I say;
When ye gang to the' wall o Stream,
O gang nae neer the well-fared may."

3. "O haud your tongue, my gay ladie,
Tak nae sic care o me;
For I nae saw a fair woman
I like so well as thee."

4. He mounted on his berry-brown steed,
And merry, merry rade he on,
Till he came to the wall o Stream,
And there he saw the mermaiden.

5. "Ye wash, ye wash, ye bonny may,
And ay's ye wash your sark o silk:"
"It's a' for you, ye gentle knight,
My skin is whiter than the milk."

6. He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
He's taen her by the sleeve sae green,
And he's forgotten his gay ladie,
And away with the fair maiden.

(Here there is a hiatus which no known English version of the ballad fills; but it becomes evident that the mermaid, in some uncanny way, has given the Clerk a mortal injury.)

7. "Ohon, alas!" says Clark Colven,
"And aye sae sair's I mean my head!"
And merrily leugh the mermaiden,
"O win on till you be dead."

8. "But out ye tak your little pen-knife,
And frae my sark ye shear a gare;
Row that about your lovely head,
And the pain ye'll never feel nae mair."

9. Out he has taen his little pen-knife,
And frae her sark he's shorn a gare,
Rowed that about his lovely head,
But the pain increased mair and mair.

10. "Ohon, alas!" says Clark Colven,
"An aye sae sair's I mean my head!"
And merrily laughd the mermaiden,
"It will aye be war till ye be dead.'.'

11. Then out he drew his trusty blade,
And thought wi it to be her dead,
But she's become a fish again,
And merrily sprang into the fleed.

12. He's mounted on his berry-brown steed,
And dowy, dowy rade he home,
And heavily, heavily lighted down
When to his ladie's bower-door he came.

13. "Oh, mither, mither, mak my bed,
And gentle ladie, lay me down;
Oh, brither, brither, unbend my bow,
'T will never be bent by me again."

14. His mither she has made his bed,
His gentle ladie laid him down,
His brither he has unbent his bow,
'T was never bent by him again.

This is plainly a ballad which concerns a man's intrigues both with a fairy and a mortal woman, and recounts the diaster brought by the fairy mistress on the man and the mortal woman he has married. Imperfect as the English versions are, the basic situation and motif in Clerk Colvill cannot be misunderstood.  Child, summarizing the situation, says,

It is clear that before his marriage he [Clerk Colvill] had been in the habit of resorting
to this mermaid, as she is afterwards called, and equally clear, from the impatient
answer which he renders his dame, that he means to visit her again.

And farther on:

His relations with the mermaid began before his marriage with his gay lady, and his death is the natural penalty of his desertion of the water-nymph; for no point is better established than the fatal consequences of inconstancy in such connections." [30]

The quotation from Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia with which Child supports the preceding observation is interesting because it illustrates the age and prevalence of this belief about faery connections in western Europe, and because it sketches a situation exactly like that which occasions the tragedy in Clerk Colvill. The ballad story, Child further states, if told in its entirety, would probably resemble closely the remarkable fourteenth-century tale of the Knight of Staufenberg. This is a fully detailed narration of the disaster that overtakes a knight who contracts a faery alliance, repents his deed, forsakes his unearthly love, weds a mortal woman and confesses his previous doings to the church authorities. In this way he brings destruction upon himself-to all appearances, inevitably-at the hands of the forsaken elf-woman. [31]

Clerk Colvill seems to have committed both the offenses described in the Otia Imperialia and the tale of Staufenberg as having deadly consequences for persons situated as he was; for he evidently has not only forsaken his fairy sweetheart, but has also imprudently mentioned her existence to his lady. This gives a peculiar point to the wording of the lady's admonition in Child's B-version:

O promise me now, Clerk Colvill,
Or it will cost ye muckle strife,
Ride never by the wells of Slane,
If ye wad live and brook your life. [32]

In version C the clerk's mother (who may or may not have taken the place of his wife through the intrusion of a conventional ballad theme in this text) forbids him to court "yon gay ladie;" whereat he replies:

Forbid me frae your ha, mother,
Forbid me frae your bour,
But forbid me not frae yon ladie;
She's fair as ony flour.

Forbidden I winna be, mother,
Forbidden I winna be,
For I maun gang to Clyde's water,
To court yon gay ladie. [33]

These stanzas, of course, establish the fact of Clerk Colvill's intimacy with the mermaid as definitely as could be desired.

Of the many Scandinavian analogues to Clerk Colvill which Child summarizes, only the Faeroese contain evidence that the hero has had anything to do with elf-women before the adventure which results in his death. In them, as in Clerk Colvill C, the hero's mother makes an ominous prophecy that her son's shirt will be bloody before he returns from a projected trip to see his
elfin sweetheart. Nevertheless, he rides to an elf-house in the hills. The elfin maid welcomes him, but he tells her he must quit the elfin company as he is to be married the next day. She then gives him a choice of lying sick seven years or dying the following day, and he chooses the latter. She brings him a poisoned draught, makes him kiss her, and sends him home a dying man. He dies the next day, and his mother and true-love die also.

The ways in which the hero is killed in other Scandinavian forms of the ballad vary considerably. In some texts he is stabbed, often sustaining many wounds; in others he is compelled to join a wild elf-dance until worn to the point of death. Sometimes-as in the oldest known version (Danish)-he simply receives a stroke, after which the elf tells him to ride home, for he will not live more than a day. There is, however, no means of guessing from these versions the manner in which the Clerk Colvill mermaid brings on her lover's death-we are left to conjecture that it may result from the fairy's fatal kiss; but this is a guess which has nothing definite to back it. When the Scandinavian ballad hero returns home, he asks that his horse be taken, his bed made, and a priest summoned. In Clerk Colvill C the mermaid (strangely) appears to the sick man and gives him a choice of living with her or dying where he is; to which he replies:

"I will lie here an die," he said,
"I will lie here an die;
In spite o a' the deils in hell
I will lie here an die." [34]

This choice between dying at once and lying sick along while is found in the Faeroese and Breton versions, a few Danish ones, and one French one, which (coming from La Vendee) probably owes this element to Breton influence.

The Norwegian forms, like the English C version, offer a choice of living with the elves or dying. This detail has pertinence to our immediate inquiry only in that it makes plain why the hero is certain that he is going to die at once.

The Breton forms of Clerk Colvill come closest of all the southern European versions to the Scandinavian. They tell of a young husband who goes hunting. In the woods he meets a fairy who tells him she has long been looking for him and he must marry her. There is no indication that he has met the fairy before. Naturally he refuses; whereupon she gives him the choice between speedy death and long sickness, and he comes home to die. Now comes the part of the ballad which is most important in the central and southern European versions. After the husband has died, his wife, who has been kept in ignorance of his death, wishes to know the meaning of all the funeral preparations: pounding of hammers, tolling of bells, and so forth. She is given
various false explanations, but finally she sees the open grave and has to be told the truth, whereupon she also dies of grief. This passage likewise forms an important part of the Scandinavian versions of Clerk Colvill outside the Faeroes; where, especially in the Danish forms, the bride asks to see the dead, puts silk coverings over the body, and then dies herself. This part of the ballad is entirely lacking in the Faeroese and English versions, but, on the other hand, it is all that survives in the forms current in France, Spain and Slavic countries. In all these forms (save the Breton already summarized) the story commences where the husband comes home deathly sick or with mortal wounds, and the supernatural element has been quite lost."

In Italy the ballad is usually current in the same abbreviated (southern European) form just described. But two versions exist (called Italian A and B by Child), so much nearer the English forms, and so strikingly different from the others, that they must be described more fully. The following brief paraphrase combines details of the two texts to clarify the tale:

Under the bridge of Rella (Diamantina) is a washerwoman. A knight passes by. The washerwoman goes into the water; the knight follows and embraces her. He goes home all wet, asks his mother to put him into bed and his horse into the stall;
make him some supper and give his horse fodder; dig him a grave and bury his horse too. He also directs bells to be rung over him, and says he and his horse have many knife-stabs.

Child suggests that these stabs are the same as the elfin wounds in the Scandinavian versions. That the washerwoman here is just as much a supernatural being as the mermaid in the English Clerk Colvill cannot be doubted; for a note to the A-version states that notwithstanding the mention of a bridge in the song, the occurrence here related was traditionally believed to have taken place at a spot caled "roc dla fda," the stone of the fairy woman. [36]

By thus surveying briefly the details in the British and continental forms of Clerk Colvill we can distinguish several facts which are important in studying the British versions and distinguishing them from the others. First: of the continental versions, those from the Faeroes are the only ones showing any trace of the hero's having had a love affair with an elf previous to his fatal encounter. Second: the manner in which the hero is killed varies a great deal in foreign versions; but nothing is found in them to throw any light on the uncanny pain in the head which kills Clerk Colvill. Third: only one version of the ballad outside the British texts definitely associates the fairy woman with water and describes her as washing. This is the unique Italian version just described. [37] The Scandinavian ballads depict the elves as living in or among the hills; but in our English Clerk Colvill the fairy is definitely a mermaid, who turns into a fish at will. Fourth: in all versions except Italian A and B the hero has a mortal wife (truelove). Fifth: the British Clerk Colvill versions have no trace of the otherwise well-known passage in which unavailing efforts are made to keep the.hero's wife (sweetheart) in ignorance of his death.

We may finally return to Miss Cra'ster's note on "Johnny Collins." Miss Cra'ster believes, of course, that the woman at the stone is a fairy, and that "Johnny Collins" is a derivative of the widespread Clerk Colvill ballad. But she tries to prove that the "Johnny Collins" version is derived in some way from the Breton tradition of Clerk Colvill, or from a hypothetical Cornish ballad which might be assumed to resemble the Breton forms. It would be natural enough to suppose that a Breton or Cornish ballad could have found its way into Hampshire, where the English variant of "Johnny Collins" was recovered. But the discovery of additional variants in American tradition indicates that the version must have been more widely known in the British Isles than she could suppose. Moreover, the Breton versions of Clerk Colvill do not resemble the English "Johnny Collins" in a single important detail; and the two ballads even differ from each other in regard to the basic motif of the story. There is no hint that the Breton ballad hero has previously met the fairy, while in "Johnny Collins" we have clear textual evidence that the hero already knows the woman at the stone. The Breton fairy is, as we recall, simply a wood-sprite, not associated with water. But the woman at the stone in "Johnny Collins" is found washing by a piece of water, and she apparently makes Collins leap into the water, whence he has to swim to get home. Our previous review of the Breton versions has made it clear, I believe, that no motivating resemblances exist between them and "Johnny Collins" except the very general one that in each case the hero meets with a being who foretells disaster for him.

Miss Cra'ster finds further basis for her opinion in another Breton ballad, Markwiz Gwerand. [38] Here, led by an apparent similarity of names, she gets farther off the track than ever. In the story of Markwiz Gwtrand a girl, pursued everywhere by an evil nobleman, refuses for fear of him to go to a certain fair; but is finally persuaded to go accompanied by her lover, a clerk.
There the nobleman discovers the two and challenges the lover. The clerk accepts the challenge and is slain by the nobleman. At this, the girl, forgetting her fear, leaps on the nobleman and drags him around the field by his hair. She then goes home, says she is sick, asks her mother to make her bed, and requests that her lover's grave may be dug wide enough to include her too. In this incoherent ballad Miss Cra'ster sees, "with slight variation," the second and third incidents of "Johnny Collins" (see her outline of the incidents, above). I am bound to say that I see not the slightest correspondence between these two stories; and the only detail in which Markwiz Gwe-rand at all resembles the ballads we are specially considering is the girl's last requests. They come into the French form of the Clerk Colvill ballad-the famous Jean Renaud-but nothing might hinder their use as ballad formulae in any piece where they could be made to fit. [39]

Miss Cra'ster's chief reason, however, for trying to identify this ballad with the tradition of Clerk Colvill on one hand and of Lady Alice on the other lies in the names of the two lovers. The man's name is Cloarak Goarlan and the woman's Anna Calvaez; and Miss Cra'ster's contention is that "cloarak," meaning clerk, was attached to "Colvill," occasioning the designation "Clerk
Colvill." She likewise sees the original of "Colvill" itself in Calvaez, the last name of the girl; and Anna, the girl's given name, she believes to account for the Lady Anna, Annis, Alice, and so forth of the "Giles Collins" form of Lady Alice. Yet the resemblances between these surnames are not only faint, but the name Calvaez itself has to be shifted from one personage to the other to effect even the slightest correspondence; and this whole theory based on the personal names and content of the Breton ballads in question seems quite unsatisfactory from all points of view. Credit for the only attempt to analyze Lady Alice, and for the initial suggestion of a possible relation between that ballad and Clerk Colvill undoubtedly belongs to Miss Cra'ster.

But I believe that she has been led to look for correspondence of plot, and for the origin of the "Johnny Collins" version, in the wrong direction. She gave some slight notice, indeed, to the resemblances between "Johnny Collins" and the Scottish Clerk Colvill; but with the single "Johnny Collins" text then at her disposal she could not discern with any assurance what this version of Lady Alice contained or implied. [40]

Now that we have briefly reviewed the principal traits of the international ballad of Clerk Colvill, however, we may compare its details with those of Lady Alice, to see what light it may actually throw on those obscure points which I have had to emphasize in my survey of the "Johnny Collins" version. It appears permissible to use foreign analogues of Clerk Colvill as well as British
versions in the comparison. For since these texts are all evidently forms, not only of the same story, but of the same ballad, we may hope that a detail left unclear in one version may be more fully explained in another. [41] This is a desirable procedure also ,since in the case of" Johnny Collins," even more than in Clerk Colvill versions, we have to deal not only with obscurity or
vagueness, but also with the peculiar compression and laconic statement which in part characterize the ballad genre, and which often leave more to be imagined in a piece than is actually told. [42] Keeping these points in mind, and recognizing, in addition, the possibilities of misinterpretation that a corrupt or telescoped ballad text affords, we should be able to compare these versions with becoming caution.

In the opening stanza of "Johnny Collins," then, the hero, roaming in the fields, sees "a fair maiden, the fairest of all, A-washing her marble-white stone." [43] Clerk Colvill, too, after he has impatiently silenced his gay lady, rides straight off to his fairy mistress:

He's taen leave o his gay lady,
Nought minding what his lady said,
And he's rode by the wells of Slane,
Where washing was a bonny maid. [44]

In the A-version (see above) Clerk Colvill accosts the mermaid with the words, "Ye wash, ye wash, ye bonny may, And ay's ye wash your sark o silk." We have seen also that in the north Italian text paraphrased above the woman (undoubtedly a fairy) whom the knight encounters under a bridge is described as a washerwoman (lavandera, lavandaja). But Child's C-version of Clerk Colvill comes closer in detail to "Johnny Collins" at this point than any other: here the clerk rides away,

An when he cam to the Clyde's water,
He lichted lowly down,
An there he saw the mermaiden
Washin silk upon a stane. [45]

In this stanza we have not only the washing but the stone as well; and the line helps clear up the obscurity of "Johnny Collins" about the maiden "washing her marble-white stone." For this line of the version, as it stands, makes no sense; but if we assume that the maiden was washing something on the stone, using it as washers in bygone times did to beat and fold garments on, we have a perfectly clear picture. It seems reasonable to suppose that at this place the "Johnny Collins" version is corrupt and that the proper reading should show the maid washing on the stone; not doing anything to the stone itself.

Miss Cra'ster has also noticed this feature, and characterizes it as probably having reference to the old custom by which a shirt given to a man by a maiden signified betrothal. The shirt having disappeared from Dr. Gardiner's text [i.e., the British text of "Johnny Collins"], there seems to have been some attempt to connect the stone with George Collins's own tombstone by turning it into marble. [46] Miss Cra'ster's conjecture about the stone's being confused with a tombstone seems justified, since two American variants of this version actually describe it thus. [47] But her belief that the shirt in Clerk Colvill signifies betrothal cannot be correct, since there obviously is no question of betrothal either between the mermaid and Colvill, or between Collins and the washing woman: both these men are either married or betrothed already, according to plain ballad statement or unavoidable inference. The mermaid, furthermore, is bent on slaying the clerk, while Collins' washing woman knows already that he is soon to die. If my interpretation of this detail is right, the washing has a very different meaning from that which Miss Cra'ster assigns to it. Resuming the analysis of "Johnny Collins," we find that as soon as Collins meets the woman at the stone she displays grief and prophesies his speedy death. In Clerk Colvill A and B the mermaid also eventually tells the clerk that he will die; in C she gives him the choice of living with her or dying in his bed; and in the Breton and most of the Scandinavian versions which I have reviewed (following Child's summaries) this detail appears as a choice offered between quick death and long sickness. Likewise in a number of versions from Denmark the rejected elf gives the hero a fatal stroke, then tells him that he will not live a day. The important difference at this point between "Johnny Collins" and Clerk Colvill is that the washing woman seems to be sorrowful while the elves in the other ballads are merely spiteful or (as in the British Clerk Colvill forms) full of malignant joy at the prospect of the hero's dying. Resemblance to the washing woman's grief in other stories similar to Clerk Colvill is seen only in the regret of Staufenberg's fairy mistress to pronounce his doom; [48] and the tale of Staufenberg may have no historical connection with the Clerk Colvill ballad, so that point-by-point comparison between the two lacks pertinence. I believe that in this case the woman's sorrow may be connected with the business of washing, and should be discussed with that trait.

Next Collins embraces the maiden at the stone. Clerk Colvill likewise, in Child's A-version, has taen her by the milk-white hand,
He's taen her by the sleeve sae green,
And he's forgotten his gay ladie,
And awa with the fair maiden.

In version C the mermaid invites Colvill to embrace her:

I'll row ye in my arms twa.
An a foot I sanna jee. [49]

And in the one Italian version where a fairy woman appears, we read that the woman goes into the water and the knight follows and embraces her. It is worth pointing out, too, that before Collins embraces the washing woman he has been expressly bidden to come to her.

The question of the association of the fairy woman in Clerk Colvill with water seems to me to be bound up with the description of her as washing; hence I shall reserve it also for discussion along with that trait. But the washing woman in "Johnny Collins" is surely connected with water too, for when Collins kisses her he leaps into the water, and seemingly has to swim for a distance
before he can get out. The detail of his swimming clear to his father's door is very curious, and I think it is probably due to corruption of the text.

Of course the supernatural woman in the English Clerk Colvill is described in all three versions as a mermaid; but in A and B her interview with Colvill seems to take place on the bank or beside the well, while to get back into the water she has to turn herself into a fish. In the C-version, however-which is identical in rhythm with "Johnny Collins" and also closer than the others
in the detail of having the maid wash on a stone-the mermaid offers Colvill what, to my mind, can be interpreted only as an invitation to him to come into the water with her:

Come down, come down, now, Clerk Colin,
Come down an [fish] wi me;
I'll row ye in my arms twa,
An a foot I sanna jee. [50]

Thus, Collins, in going into the water to embrace the woman, seemingly performs the identical action of Colvill in Child's C-version, and of the anonymous knight in the unique Italian form. And there cannot be a misunderstanding of the final line of the "Johnny Collins" stanza:

Till the stars from heaven come twinkling down
On the banks where Collins jumped in."

The third line of this stanza is puzzling in view of the rarity of figurative language in late-collected ballad versions of our tradition. I presume it to mean, however, that Collins stayed with the woman in the water until nightfall- provided it is not a hopelessly corrupt line of actual original magic meaning. At any rate, this verse about the stars occurs in all the American
texts but four which happen to lack the stanza containing it. [52] In place of this stanza the British text has one which seems to describe the same action, but says, more obscurely:

He put his foot to the broad water side,
And over the lea sprung he,
He embraced her around her middle so small,
And kissed her red, rosy cheeks. [53]

The word lea in this stanza can hardly refer to the meadow over which Collins was roving, since in the first line we are expressly told that he "put his foot to the broad water side." I take it to be a corruption or variant form of the dialect word "lay," meaning a lake or pool. [54] If this interpretation be correct it fixes the water-association of the washing woman in the British variant of "Johnny Collins" as well as in the American.

Going on with the incidents in this version, we see that when Collins comes home he says he will probably die "this very night." In nearly all the versions of Clerk Colvill the hero declares or implies that his death is imminent: Child's three versions make him bequeath his bow (spear, sword) to his brother, and in A and C he says that he will never use them again. In the Scandinavian versions summarized by Child, he asks that his bed be made, bandages brought, the priest summoned, and so forth; in some of these he says that he will never rise again, or that he fears he will die before the priest comes. It is equally clear from the requests made in the southern European forms that the hero knows he cannot live long; indeed, he sometimes returns with such dreadful wounds (especially in the French Jean Renaud forms) that it is impossible for him to live: he wastes no words, but simply orders his bed prepared at once.

The hero's dying requests in Clerk Colvill have general parallels in the Lady Alice texts; and though they mainly seem to be commonplaces, yet their presence and occasional likeness in these two ballads that otherwise resemble each other so closely merit a brief review for them. At least one of them, considering the circumstances, is rather striking. As in the Scandinavian
versions, Colvill requests that his mother (A, C, lady, B) make his bed; that his lady (A, sister, C) lay him down. Collins, in the British "Johnny Collins" variant, also asks his mother to make his bed. In two variants of the common English "Giles Collins" versions," he asks her to call the parson (as the Scandinavian Clerk Colvill hero calls for the priest). But such details as these are alike common in ballads and natural under the circumstances. More to the point is Collins' request to have his head bound up. This occurs in only one of the "Johnny Collins" texts-the British variant-where Collins says:

Arise, my dear father, and let me in,
Arise, my dear mother, and make my bed,
Arise, my dear sister, and get me a napkin,
A napkin to bind round my head. [56]

But in three texts of the common English Lady Alice, Giles Collins calls on his mother, in the opening stanzas, to bind up his head. [57] Although this detail has no clear parallel in other texts; and although head-binding is used quite differently in the British Clerk Colvill versions, and serves to ease more than one sort of ailment in our folk songs generally-still, its presence in Lady Alice, a ballad so obviously close in other features to Clerk Colvill, cannot fail to remind us of the strange pain in the head, caused by the mermaid, which kills the clerk. We may recall, too, that nowhere but in the British Child A and B versions of the Clerk Colvill ballad does the hero die from this cause. Yet in these versions binding the hero's head hastens his death!

So there may be no real reason for regarding the detail in Lady Alice as another item adding to the mutual resemblance of the two pieces. All we can be sure of is that, occurring where it does-at the beginning of these "Giles Collins" texts-it is as meaningless as Collins' sudden announcement in the same place that he is about to die.

There is yet one more notable similarity between the events of Lady Alice (in its fuller "Johnny Collins" form) and those of Clerk Colvill. I have described the passage, so important in many continental versions of Clerk Colvill, which narrates the efforts to keep the hero's death hidden from his wife or betrothed; her eventual discovery of the event; and her own consequent death. This section of the ballad has dropped clear out of the English form: in these versions Colvill addresses his last words to his lady as well as his mother and brother, and the piece then ends quite abruptly. But since Child's study shows that some of the earliest recorded and best preserved versions in other parts of Europe include this incident, there is pretty good reason for regarding it as an ancient, perhaps original, part of the story. Now the ballad of Lady Alice, in its common English form, tells the story of a lady who sees a coffin go by her door and asks the bearers whom they are taking to the grave. They reply that it is Giles Collins, who was once a truelover of hers. She commands them to set down the coffin and let her look upon the dead. In one of the common forms[58] she asks for a last kiss from the lips she has often kissed before. In three of these varaints we learn from a more or less introductory first stanza that the man has died suddenly. The remainder of this version usually tells of the lovers' burial, employing the stock stanzas about the loving plants that grow from their graves. These stanzas may be
disregarded, as they are not material to the story; and indeed (to repeat a statement made at the beginning) they go contrary to Giles Collins' explicit request concerning his burial place.

In themselves, of course, these incidents of the regular Lady Alice version make a sufficient ballad story. The fact that the variants fail to account for Collin's death makes little difference, as the interest centers on his truelove. But when we turn to the "Johnny Collins" version, we see a much fuller story which recounts not only the fate of the lady, but also certain adventures
of Collins himself just before he dies. These adventures seem very mysterious as related in the variants which we know. I have been trying to show that all the occurrences and most of the details in the first half of "Johnny Collins" correspond to those in the versions (especially the British ones) of Clerk Colvill. And if we compare the fuller Scandinavian or Breton analogues with "Johnny Collins," it strikes us immediately that the last part of this British piece corresponds with that section in the foreign Clerk Colvill analogues which tells how the elf-shot man's wife discovers his death and consequently dies herself.

The specific resemblances are that Lady Alice (fair Ellen) sees Collins' coffin, and upon inquiry learns for the first time that it is her lover. This corresponds, though it is quite short, to the questions asked by the wife in the continental Clerk Colvill versions. As I said before, Lady Alice's servants know more about the tragedy than she; and the whole situation here is an exact parallel
to that in the final episode of the fuller Clerk Colvill ballads. Next Lady Alice asks to look once more on the dead body; directs that it be trimmed or garlanded; takes a last kiss; and says she also will be dead the next day. These things likewise the elf-shot man's bride does in the Scandinavian Clerk Colvill analogues. And Lady Alice, in saying that her body shall lie by her lover's, is re-echoing the sentiment of Renaud's wife in the French Clerk Colvill, who orders the grave dug wide enough to accommodate two. All these passages are undoubtedly riddled with ballad conventions; but I take occasion to say again that conventions like these were made to fit themes in stories (not vice versa), and when situations recur, so do the conventional "runs."[59]

And here again we find the Clerk Colvill and Lady Alice themes recurring in the same order. Lady Alice, in one text, even kills herself; which the bride in some Scandinavian Colvill forms does also. [60] It is difficult not to see in this part of Lady Alice a shortened and simplified rendering of the last episode of the Clerk Colvill story as told in continental forms. The bride's successive questions, and the suspense created thereby, are absent; but the other elements are present, and the basic circumstances are surely identical.

Thus far, it looks as though the full "Johnny Collins" version of Lady Alice were actually a re-telling of the story told in the ballad of Clerk Colvill; being especially close in details to the British forms of that ballad. An important difference between the two pieces is that in Clerk Colvill the situation of the chief personage between two trueloves-one a mortal woman, the other an elf-is made clear. In "Johnny Collins" the hero also has two trueloves, as I think the textual evidence shows beyond question; but no text tells us clearly what sort of being the woman at the stone is. When we consider the close resemblance of these two ballads in all other respects, however, I believe we are forced by circumstances to assume that the woman at the stone is also a supernatural creature-Collins' fairy mistress, a being of the same sort as the mermaid in the other ballad. Only by joining this supposition to our comparison of the two pieces can we understand any of Collins' adventures in the first half of Lady Alice. Granting this assumption, we may better understand how the stone-woman can prophesy Collins' death; why he leaps into the water to embrace her; why he also realizes that his death is at hand. We likewise understand more clearly the place of the mortal sweetheart fair Ellen, and her behavior upon seeing Collins' body. Without this assumption we understand nothing at all. Therefore I believe that we must agree with Miss Cra'ster and regard the woman at the stone as the fairy mistress whom Collins deserts to his own undoing. If she be accepted as a fairy, we can afford to recognize further evidence that Collins had known her before the encounter narrated in the ballad. It lies in the fact that he embraces her after she has foretold his death. [61] Every variant of "Johnny Collins" that is at all complete or well ordered has the events in this order; and it is hardly likely that a man meeting a fairy for the first time would take her in his arms when she had just told him that his life was "soon to an end."

That "Johnny Collins" and Clerk Colvill thus tell the same story about the same sorts of personages placed in the same circumstances appears certain. Naturally, then, we ask with Miss Cra'ster, Are they not in reality one and the same piece? Or, perhaps, are they not both descendants of a fuller form of the Clerk Colvill ballad? A circumstance which seems to add to this possibility is that which, of course, has been obvious all along: the strong resemblance between the names of the heroes in both pieces. The British Clerk Colvill has the names Colven (A), Colvill (B), and Colin (C). [62] The man's name in Lady Alice is invariably Collins, or some derivative of it, and its similarity to the names in the other ballad needs no emphasis-except to note that comes nearest to the Colin of Child C, which is likewise the closest to "Johnny Collins" in rhythm, in evidence that the clerk actually goes into the water, and in the circumstance that its mermaid is washing on a stone. This description of the fairy women in the two ballads as washing by a body of water is another curious point of resemblance between them; curious because it is so rare a feature in versions of Clerk Colvill. Outside of the English form we find it only in the unusual Italian version summarized above; and indeed, these two forms also stand alone in associating the fairy woman with water. Because of their complete separation from each other, their common possession of these traits might incline us toward the conclusion that they were the only surviving members of a once widespread group of versions. The traditional vigor displayed by this ballad in Scandinavia, however, and the relative fullness and wealth of detail in the texts preserved there, seem to render this conclusion a hazardous one, to be adopted only if no alternate possibilities present themselves.

If the watery associations of the fairy woman in Clerk Colvill were an especially widespread and ancient feature of the ballad, it is hard to imagine why such a trait should be supplanted entirely in lands like Norway, the  Faeroes, and Brittany. It is equally difficult to imagine an English version of the ballad influencing an Italian one. But since almost anything seems apt to happen in folk tradition, it is not impossible, I suppose, that a version of the British mermaid variety could have traveled to Italy and become traditional alongside the truncated forms prevalent there. A likelier assumption, however (it seems to me), is that in Italy and the British Isles the ballad details were altered locally and independently by the association of the fte with water; a change prompted by some element in the folk beliefs of those who sang the ballad.

Changes in personality and mingling of associations or attributes among supernatural beings certainly cannot be called uncommon anywhere;" nor is there any reason why they should affect the faery creatures of balladry less than those of romance or folktale. But if I assume an alteration of this sort for the sprite in the English Clerk Colvill, I must attempt to justify my view by pointing out what folklore elements appear to have caused it. The case of the Italian version has not been closely examined, since that version is not pertinent to the immediate inquiry. [64] But for the British texts we appear to have abundant record of the traditional beliefs which must have brought about the change.

That bodies of water are inhabited by various uncanny creatures is of course a worldwide belief of great age. All over northern Europe the folklore portrays such beings in various aspects-harmless or evil, foul or fair; and often exerting strong fascination or showing an inclination to cohabit with humans. In regard to this last trait, the consensus of folk opinion is that it is safest to have nothing to do with such creatures, by water or by land. [65] The fact that they were regarded as demons, and relations with them endangered one's salvation, was of course a powerful element in shaping this attitude. [66] It makes us understand more clearly the background of a story like Clerk Colvill, and the unearthly horror and tragedy of its hero's predicament.

Among the occupations ascribed to fairies and other uncanny beings all over northwestern Europe is that of washing clothes. Supernatural people of the hills and "wild women" are described by tradition as washing their garments and hanging them out to dry just like mortals; and the attachment of such an occupation to elfin creatures anywhere need hardly be a matter
for surprise nor would it be out of harmony with traditional beliefs. We have seen that the fairy mistress of Clerk Colvill is simply a hill- or wood-sprite in most versions of the ballad but becomes a mermaid, or some sort of watercreature in the English and in one Italian form. [67] And it seems reasonable to think that making a watersprite wash on a stone is simply the result of adding another familiar trait to a supernatural being. This is the only way, I believe, in which we can adequately account for the presence of the trait in the single Italian version already described, since no other record of the ballad outside the British Isles seems to afford any information on the matter.

It looks, then, as if the depiction of the fairy woman in Clerk Colvill as a water-creature engaged in washing were an alteration of the ballad story which had been made independently in British tradition. In these traits (as has been shown) Clerk Colvill and "Johnny Collins" are exactly alike. [68] But furthermore, it seems to me that in both these British ballads there is an additional
and special feature to this washing done by the fairy maidens- a feature not possessed by the ordinary "washing of the wild women." In order to bring it out we must again have recourse to the texts. When Clerk Colvill greets the mermaid he says (in Child A):

Ye wash, ye wash, ye bonny may,
And ay's ye wash your sark o silk.

To which the mermaid makes this curious answer (italics mine):

It's a' for you, ye gentle knight,
My skin is whiter than the milk. [69]

These words are not perfectly clear, but they might, I think, be interpreted in two ways. First: I am washing this shirt for you, and my skin is whiter than milk; or, second: It is all for your sake that my skin is white, or, my charms are for you alone. In the first interpretation the mermaid's statement about her complexion has no rapport with her answer to Colvill's reference
to the shirt; in the second, her answer to the clerk, though it might fit their situation in a general way, has no connection at all with what he has just said to her. Miss Cra'ster, as already stated, favors the first interpretation, connecting the passage with the custom of giving betrothal-shirts; but it has been demonstrated that in this case there is no question of betrothal. I too
favor the first interpretation, but for a different reason. There must be some connection, surely, between the clerk's "Ye wash your sark o silk" and the mermaid's "It's a' for you." In Child's B-version the stanza corresponding to the one just quoted runs:

Wash on, vash on, my bonny maid,
That wash sae clean your sark of silk.
And weel fa' you, fair gentleman,
Your body whiter than the milk. [70]

This stanza makes their conversation sound as if they had met for the first time-which is impossible. Apparently the common greeting "weel fa' you" has replaced "it's a' for you," while in this variant the clerk's skin is said to be whiter than milk. My suggestion is that Child's A-version has suffered corruption at this point; and that if we read the last two lines of the stanza in A:

It's a' for you, ye gentle knight,
Your skin is whiter than the milk,

we have not only complete connection between salutation and reply, but the mermaid's whole answer becomes a sinister piece of dramatic irony when the present situation and previous relations of the two personages are remembered. For we are told in both the A- and B-versions that the clerk cuts off a piece of what seems to be this very shirt to bind round his aching head, and
that this increases, instead of relieving, his pain.

Now comparing "Johnny Collins" once again with this ballad, we find neither mention of a shirt, nor hint of how Collins is killed; but in both this and the "Giles Collins" versions it is stated that when Collins finally comes home he has to have his head bound up. Here also, however, we have the fairy woman's prophecy of his death. The difference of attitude between the two supernatural women at this point is noteworthy; but more so is the correspondence of the two ballad stories in regard to the washing, the prophecy (which is made a little later in Clerk Colvill) and the hero's manifestly magical death. So the deadly use of the shirt in Clerk Colvill combines with the other circumstances to make us think that in both pieces the washing cannot be
the mere domestic drudgery so widely ascribed to elfin creatures, but is instead invested with a more sinister meaning.

I must digress for a moment to speak of some points connected with the tradition of Clerk Colvill and "Johnny Collins." All three British Colvill texts were recorded in the northeast of Scotland-in the counties of Forfar and Aberdeen. The only "Johnny Collins" variant recovered in Great Britain comes from Hampshire; all the others were written down in the United States. In the Hampshire text we find these lines beginning the final stanza:

Those news was carried to London Town,
And wrote on London gate. [71]

In the American texts the name of London is regularly replaced by some form  of Dublin. [72] Ballad-singers do not localize their versions in this way without reason; and the only explanation that offers itself for this particular and persistent localization is that these variants of "Johnny Collins" had been traditional in Ireland, and were imported thence into this country. It is futile,
of course, to speculate about whether an individual or one or many families could first have carried the version to this country. The variants agree closely and may have been known originally to only a few immigrants. But their distribution is curiously limited. My own texts came from a small area of southwestern Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia, a region which in the latter eighteenth century had a considerable infusion of Scotch-Irish and Gaelic Irish settlers. More southerly variants came from Doddridge County, West Virginia (only a few miles south of the region where my texts were gathered), from Hardy and Pocahontas Counties, West Virginia, and from Highland County, Virginia. Highland, Hardy and Pocahontas Counties are all close together and lie in the Appalachian ranges which form the western boundary of the great "Valley of Virginia," first settled by Scotch- Irish and Germans from Pennsylvania. [73] What evidence we have, then, about the travels of this version also indicates quite strongly the likelihood of Irish tradition. It may be noted likewise that aside from having London instead of Dublin, the isolated Hampshire variant of "Johnny Collins" differs from American texts in no noteworthy respect.

Since Clerk Colvill was current in the Scottish Northeast, a region not distant from the Highlands, it would not be at all strange should this ballad be influenced by special beliefs traditional among the Gaelic highlanders. The "Johnny Collins" version, if it has been traditional in Ireland (as available evidence seems to indicate), can hardly have failed to be touched also by Gaelic belief. The fairy woman's association with water in Clerk Colvill appears from our previous comparison of versions to be an element which entered into the tradition of this ballad in the British Isles. That the fairy woman in "Johnny Collins" is also a watersprite likewise appears certain. And if we concede what seems to me to be pretty clearly brought out in the texts: namely that the washing done by these faery beings is apparently not purely casual, but is bound up with the tragedy in each piece, and has a sinister symbolism especially marked in Clerk Colvill by reason of the mermaid's speech-then, I think, it is hard to believe that the characters of the elfwomen in both ballads have not been modified by beliefs concerning the Gaelic "banshee."

Keightley states that the banshee cannot properly be classed as a fairy because she is in most countries regarded as the spirit of an injured mortal. [74] I cannot see that any such exclusive definition can be formulated. As is well known, her name means simply "fairy woman,'.' and I have not been able to find that she differs from Gaelic fairies generally in most of her characteristics. Like other elves in the folklore, she varies in appearance and disposition, and occasionally takes a human lover. What applies to other elves in this connection applies also to the banshee: if she is offended, her lover is in danger of his life. [75]

But the banshee's special attributes in popular belief are still more pertinent in connection with the record of our ballad texts. She is, of course, widely known as a mournful foreteller of death and disaster; but in this role we likewise find her almost continually associated with water, and performing a ceremony of washing which has a grisly significance. Her station, we are told, is generally at fords in the river; [76] the stone on which she folds the shirts of the doomed is in the middle of the water; at times she is seen seated by pool or stream washing the linen of those soon to die, and folding and beating it with her hands on a stone in the middle of the water-at which times she is known as the bean nighe, or washing woman, and her being seen is a sure sign that death is near. [77] Do not these details throw light on "Johnny Collins," with its washing on a stone, its lamenting woman, its death-prophecy, and its hero's leap into the water? [78]

The banshee appears to be a descendant, or survival, of that gruesome creature, the washer at the ford, who appears in earlier Irish literature. Some features of earlier-recorded appearances of this creature are also instructive when compared with details of our "Johnhy Collins" ballad. They tend to show, for one thing, how the washing fairies could be conversed with as well
as seen. According to one story, Cormac Conloingeas, enroute to the Bruidhean Da Choga in Ulster, sees a red woman at a ford, washing a chariot and harness and bloodying the water. She tells the prince that she does so for a king (i.e., Cormac himself) who is to die. [79] The tale of the "Triumphs of Turlough" likewise has a washer at the ford-this time a hideous hag who calls herself Bronach, or the sorrowful one; and another story has one of the De Clare family, on a warlike expedition about 1318, meet a horrible woman washing armor and robes and filling the water with blood. This creature also converses with the chief, telling him that she is called the Water Doleful One; that she is of the "tribes of Hell," and has her dwelling in the green hills. [80]

This is the sort of spirit who, I suggest, has in all probability lent some of her nature and activities to the elfin women of Clerk Colvill and "Johnny Collins." It is even possible, for that matter, that in "Johnny Collins" there never was any other type of fairy woman. It seems that unless we assume that ideas about the banshee have intruded themselves into these ballad stories we shall be at a loss to account for the fairy woman's lamentation in "Johnny Collins," and the washing trait in both pieces. I have tried to show that the grim meaning of this washing comes out clearly in Child's A-version of Clerk Colvill.

The banshee, moreover, is like other fairies of Celtic belief in that she dwells in the green hills (e.g., the statement of the Water Doleful One just quoted). [81] Now in American texts of "Johnny Collins" the dying man asks to be buried by the stone at the foot of fair Ellender's hill-and, as already mentioned, five of the texts say "fair Ellen's green hill." Even if this detail should be only a conventional one in the present state of the ballad, its occurrence may still embody a relic of a lively earlier belief; and at any rate, there seems to be no good reason for Collins' refusal of burial in the churchyard, with the sudden introduction of the hill at this point in the ballad, unless a fairy hill is meant. [82]

I believe that the foregoing comparison between these two ballads makes plain the fact that they tell the same story; and that it also shows the correspondence of the pieces in all the important details of that story to be amazingly close. Even more curious is the fact that the full Lady Alice version apparently outlines the events of a part of Clerk Colvill which has completely
disappeared from the British form of that ballad.

All appearances, then, seem to argue not only similarity, but identity for these two pieces. They suggest strongly that Lady Alice must be simply another offshoot of the ancient Clerk Colvill ballad-abbreviated and obscured in most texts, but still having one version ("Johnny Collins") that tells the entire ballad story, as it is found nowhere else in English folksong. The obvious differences in rhythms and language between these ballads seem unimportant compared with their striking similarities in all other respects. No two ballads in English are more closely allied than the pair now under scrutiny.

Nor does it appear that "Johnny Collins" is the result of versifying a British folktale similar in outline to Clerk Colvill. In such a case the names would be likely to differ completely; but they do not. I have found numerous folktale and folk anecdote examples of the beliefs and motifs basic to these pieces, but no case which shows the tally of parallels discoverable in the ballads themselves. In both ballads, the same ancient, floating motifs are joined together in the same order-forming a union which is truly "temporal and distinctive," as Professor Entwistle expresses it. [83]

 The extant texts of Lady Alice afford us but little help in reconstructing an outline of the traditional history of the ballad. That "Johnny Collins" is the oldest surviving version there can be no doubt. Besides its preservation of archaic motifs, its language is free from the levity and broadside diction that characterize the English "Giles Collins" version. [84] And in it the garland hung over Collins' grave by his mortal truelove is simply a sheet decorated with roses or lace--quite different from the gewgaws with which churches were festooned in the later days of the custom. [85]

However, supposing that "Johnny Collins" is actually a version of Clerk Colvill, as everything seems to indicate, we may perhaps make out one or two more fragments of its history. Noting its thoroughgoing difference in phraseology from the Scottish ballad, we may infer that it is the product of a recomposition of the older international piece. The recomposing may have been done in Ireland, although this cannot be proved; but undoubtedly there is more true, Gaelic "bansheeism" about its fairy woman than appears in the texts of Clerk Colvill. At any rate, it seems practically certain that the American variants of this version have been traditional in Ireland.

We can make out yet a little more about this recomposed version. Quite plainly, the recomposition took place at a period when the full story of the ballad was still traditional among British folk singers, and before the worndown or lopped-off forms like "Giles Collins" and Clerk Colvill had superseded it in oral circulation. Also it definitely appears that this recomposed form was
produced at a time when a need was felt for shorter versions of the old ballads.

Garbled and obscured as it undoubtedly is, this "Johnny Collins" version still manages to include all the important elements in the ballad story and even to give them a relatively proportionate amount of space (or rather attention) in the telling. I therefore cannot find reason to think that this version, in its fullest (ten-stanza) texts surviving has greatly shrunken since being first put together. It seems, on the contrary, to testify to a deliberate condensation on the part of some traditional re-creator. Ballad style notably compresses the stories told in ballads: Clerk Colvill is compressed alongside a story like that of the Knight of Staufenberg; but the compression of "Johnny Collins" is extraordinary. In fourteen stanzas Clerk Colvill A gets only part of the entire story told; "Johnny Collins" manages to tell it all in ten. [86]

The drastic condensation which the story has undergone in "Johnny Collins" has no doubt helped to make it obscure, and thus facilitated misunder standing and corruption as the song was handed down to later singers; facilitated likewise a loss of content that in the defective texts of the version lately collected suggests forcibly the sort of processes that must have led to the present shortened "Giles" and "George" versions. As the supernatural element became unintelligible, it was sloughed off. But because some singers of the present day and recent past have not comprehended the song, we have no reason to think that those who preserved this extraordinary version have always misunderstood its true character. At least one other ballad (also in Irish tradition) has been preserved with a clear understanding, on the part of some singers, of its uncanny background, even though all supernatural elements had quite disappeared from the actual verses. [87] It seems likely that in recent times some singers of "Johnny Collins" have attempted to rationalize the piece by identifying the fairy mistress with fair Ellen, the mortal truelove. But I cannot think that the first form of this recomposition was made with any rationalizing intent. For in that case, its excessive brevity would at once reduce it to incomprehensibility; since all the supernatural part of the narrative would then be left in the ballad without a sign of any attempt to account for its presence, or explain its connection with the latter half of the piece. I have pointed out that when this rifacimento was made there must have been fuller forms of the ballad current in British tradition than have since been recovered. The Clerk Colvill versions show plainly that the unearthly elements in the story were fully comprehended, and we must conclude that folk singers must likewise have understood the true nature of the story in the lost form from which "Johnny Collins" is derived.

In a traditional ballad, large quantities of uncomprehended material would be bound to disappear from the singers' memories, and hence from the ballad versions. Apparently this is exactly what has happened to the sung versions of Lady Alice, for the most part-the entire first half has been forgotten in most cases, and it looks as if the whole ballad has been prevented from dying out of oral currency only by the fact that its latter half remained intelligible while preserving an interesting section of the narrative that could be regarded as a complete unit in itself.

As I have said, I see no reason why the re-creator of "Johnny Collins" should have included the supernatural first half of the full story in his retelling unless he had some understanding of its real implications. Today, however, there is no sign that the folk singers understand this version at all. They seem generally to confound the fairy and the mortal women. And the nature of the
gaps in recently-collected American variants shows that the first half of this version is on the way out because its singers really have no idea what it means. If it stays in tradition much longer, "Johnny Collins" will undoubtedly become a shortened form like "Giles Collins" before it disappears altogether. Under present circumstances, therefore, the preservation of the whole "Johnny Collins" version can be regarded only as an accident, due, probably, to the version's being current among a highly conservative group of singers, like the Irish. From this point.of view, "Johnny Collins" is an outstanding example of the tenacity of traditional memory, which clings to the details of an old ballad story of fairy love and vengeance for some time after their real meaning has been entirely forgotten. [88]

Pennsylvania State College,
State College, Pa.

Footnotes:

1 F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (xo vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1882-98). Lady Alice notes and versions in 2: 279, 280; 3: 514, 515; 5: 225, 226. This source hereinafter called ESPB.

2 ESPB 5: 225, 226.

3. Variants of this version appear in M. Matteson and M. E. Henry, Beech Mountain Folk- Songs and Ballads (New York: G. Schirmer, cop. 1936) 2, 3; C. J. Sharp and Maude Karpeles, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), i: 196-9; Dorothy Scarborough, A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1937) 118-22; Reed Smith, South Carolina Ballads (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928) 142, 143; M. E. Henry, Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938) 89, 90o; L. W. Chappell, Folk-Songs of Roanoke and the Albemarle (Morgantown, W. Va.: The Ballad Press, 1939) 33, 34; A. K. Davis, Jr., Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929) 346-53; J. H. Cox, Folk-Songs of the South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925) I12, I13, vers. C, D. Versions with the lyric-song intrusions mentioned above are Sharp-Karpeles A, B, C7; Scarborough, F; Smith's variant; Davis C, D, E, F, G; and Cox C, D.

4 ESPB 2: 279. It was likewise the type selected for parodies; see The Universal Songster or Museum of Mirth (London, 1826) 3: 14, for an especially coarse and absurd one.

5 Only one "Giles Collins" variant from American tradition has been published lately, to my knowledge: see Josiah Combs, Folk-Songs from the Kentucky Highlands (New York: G. Schirmer, cop. 1939) 8, 9.

6 The Check-List of recorded songs in the English language in the Archive of American Folk Song to July, 1940 (Washington, D. C.: The Library of Congress Music Division, 1942) lists fourteen recordings of "George Collins" (undoubtedly the Lady Alice ballad) on page 113, as against one entry called "John Collins" (199), which may or may not be the "Johnny Collins" form. Incidentally, the absence of Lady Alice from northeastern American tradition is striking.

7 Sharp-Karpeles, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, version F, may be a North Carolina relic of the version; but it is too fragmentary for clear identification.

8 The British fragments appear in Journal of the Folk Song Society (hereinafter called JFSS) 3: 299-301, 1909. Published American variants are Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia (hereinafter called Davis) A, B (346-8), and Cox, Folk-Songs of the South (hereinafter called Cox) A, B, E (1Io-x4). Cox B was first printed in JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE 32: 500, 1919. The seven texts and eight tunes in my own collection were all collected in the 1930's except one taken down in September 1944. My best text is the one given in full above.

9 Child's A-version, and the variant in ESPB 3: 515. to Child's B-version, stanza 4.

10. Cf., for instance, these lines from a Pennsylvania version .(in my own collection) of "The Irish Girl:"

Oh, the very next time I see my love, I were sick and like for to die:
I called for a handkerchief around my head for to tie.
I axed if anyone so bad as I had e'er got well again,
For love it is a killing thing--did you ever feel the pain?

12 ESPB 2: 279.

13 In the well-known "Wittam Miller," for example, it seems to be used to try to alleviate the mental torture of remorse: see Cox 312, vers. B of that ballad.

14 Cf. Prof. W. J. Entwistle's dictum, "ballad language is formula," and his whole series of summarizing statements in his European Balladry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939) 27.

15 My own texts which preserve this detail usually have the maid wring her hands and tear her hair. Davis A and B (346-8) have "she screamed, she cried," and Cox A, E (iio, 114) have a similar formula.

16 Cox A, B, E (110-4), and all of my texts but the one given in full above have Collins making the amorous advances.

17 In Davis A he runs; in the British variant (JFSS 3: 300, 301, 1909) he rides.

18 One of my own, from Wetzel County, West Virginia.

19 JFSS 3: 299, 300, the first text, stanza 4, 1909.

20 The texts that have "green hill" are Davis A (4), Cox A (S), E (5), and two of my own.

21 Davis B and two of my own.

22 Those which give the woman at the stone no name are Davis A, the British variant, and three of mine. Texts naming her are Davis B, Cox A, B, E, and four of mine.

23 Only the British variant does not make her grief clear-it has her hail Collins, but not weep, wring her hands, and so forth.

24 The British text, first variant, JFSS 3: 299, 300, stanza 6, 1909.

25 As in Davis A, first stanza.

26 JFSS 3: 299-301. The variant was collected in 1906.

27 JFSS 4: 106-9, 1910.

28 Idem, 106.

29 ESPB i: 387, 388. Child's whole introduction to this ballad, which doubtless owes much also to Grundtvig's great study Elveskud-both scholars treating the international manifestations of the piece at length-is in ESPB I: 371-89, and further notes occur in ESPB 2: 506; 3: 506; 4: 459; 5: 215, 216, 290.

30 ESPB I: 372.

31 There is no space for a full summary of this romance here. It is summarized in great detail, however, in ESPB I: 372-4.

32 ESPB I: 388, stan. 2 of vers. B.

33 ESPB I: 389, stan. 3, 4 of vers. C.

34 ESPB 1: 389, final stanza.

35 All these forms are fully summarized-by Child in ESPB 1: 374-82 and 384-7.

36 For the two Italian texts brought together side by side, see Romania ii: 397, 398, 1882 and the annotations. See also Child's summary ESPB 1: 382.

37 It is true that in a single (and suspect) text given by Villemarqu6 (Barzaz-Breiz, ed. 1867, 25) the hero stops his hunting to drink at a spring, and sees by it a Korrigan combing her hair. The text implies that she is the guardian of the spring and has her dwelling near by. But in other Breton versions the man is simply accosted by a Korrigan in the woods.

38 Which she finds in Villemarque, Chants Populaires de la Br6tagne, ed. 1846, 2: 122.

39 Requests identical with or similar to these two are, of course, floating ballad commonplaces in English tradition as well.

40 Miss Cra'ster's discussion, of which the preceding is a summary and evaluation, is in JFSS 4: p.107-9, 1910.

41 As Alexander Keith justly says in his edition of Gavin Greig's Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs (Aberdeen: The Buchan Club, 1925) xxxiii, "It is exceedingly unusual for a balladist to get a complete version of a ballad." And the incomplete state of many of the versions so far summarized is only too noticeable.

42 Cf. Prof. L. C. Wimberley's warnings against this often perplexing "reticence" of the popular ballad, in his Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, cop. 1928) 33, p. 101.

43 As one of my texts has it.

44 Child B, ESPB i: 388, stan. 4.

45 ESPB I: 389, stan. 6.

46 JFSS 4: 107, I9IO. The betrothal-reference is from Child: a note (ESPB 5: 284) concerning The Elfin Knight (Child No. 2), in which the situation, context and all circumstances are different from either Clerk Colvill or Lady Alice; hence the shirt in that ballad cannot possibly be the same sort of thing, or be used in the same way, as in the Clerk Colvill versions.

47 Davis A. (346) has "white marble tomb," and one of my Pennsylvania texts has "marble tombstone."

48 See ESPB i: 373.

49 ESPB 1: 389, stanza 7.

50 See note 49; and cf. the tenth stanza, ibid., which is equally explicit.

51 One of my Pennsylvania versions known in Fayette County and collected in September, 1944, has at this point, "On the river where Collins jumped in"-surely a reading too plain to admit of doubt, and supported by Cox A, B, E at this point in the ballad, and by all my full texts. The lines just quoted are from the text given in full above.

52 Davis A, B (346-8) and two of my own.

53 JFSS 3: 300, third stanza of second fragment.

54 New English Dictionary 6: I: 222.

55 Child B and ESPB 3: 514.

56 JFSS 3: 300, 5th stanza of second fragment.

57 Child B, C, and ESPB 3: 514.

58 ESPB 3: 514. My opinion about this whole section of the ballad agrees generally with Miss Cra'ster's, JFSS 4: 106, 1910.

59 This is undoubtedly why the formula of the love-animated plants finally became attached to Lady Alice.

60 ESPB 3: 515. Though the action here is somewhat burlesqued, it may once have been a completely serious element; and in any case, such an action does not violate the situation.

61 Her knowledge of his name, and addressing him as "my dear" are not absolutely conclusive, as the former could be a fairy attribute, while the latter may have crept in as a result of the confusion between her and the mortal truelove.

62 Agreeing with the Scandinavian names only in common possession of the element "ol" (as, Olaf, Rolig, Volder)-not necessarily any indication that the two sets of names are related.

 63 Cf. G. L. Kittredge, Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916) 77. W. Mannhardt in Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (2 vols. Berlin, I875) i: 154, sums up the question of elfin interchanges of attributes in the words "forest and field spirits are separated to such a slight extent into definite classes that they frequently intermingle" (translation
mine).

64 Italians certainly have believed in watersprites and mermaids, as well as other sorts of unearthly beings; see Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (2 vols. London, 1833) 2: 238.

65 See R. Hunt, Romances and Drolls of the West of England (London, 1864) 150-2; Folk-Lore of Suffolk (D. Nutt, London, 1893), 35, 36; Charlotte S. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore (London, 1883-6), 78, 79; Folk-Lore 44: 295-305, 1933: this article declares the white ladies so often haunting wells and springs to be only countryside ghosts; County Folk-Lore 2: 8, 25, 27,
41, 81, 1901; 8: 3Io, 19Io; Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte i: 152, 153; J. and W. Grimm, Deutsche Sagen (2 vols. Berlin, i816) i: 71; 61-90; 2: 253; J. M. MacKinlay, Folk-Lore of Scottish Lakes and Springs (Glasgow, 1893) 138; 156-66; Keightley, Fairy Mythology I: 242; 2: 70, 71, 282-4; J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1900) 41; Augusta P. Gregory, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (2 vols. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920) i: 101, 121, 16i, 188. Add County Folk-Lore 2: 36, 40, 1901.

66 See Kittredge, Gawain and the Green Knight 236-9, with its incisive discussion of the eventual predominance of this feeling in regard to all fairy mistress stories.

67 Curiously, the fairy sweetheart in later forms of the Staufenberg story also became a water nymph: see J. and W. Grimm, Deutsche Sagen 2: 253; ESPB i: 374.

68 For instances of supernatural beings washing, see County Folk-Lore 2: 29, 1901; Anatole Le Braz, La L6gende de la Mort en Basse Br6tagne (Paris, 1893) 376-81; same, La L6gende de la Mort chez les Br6tons Armoricains (Paris, 1923) 2: 239; Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte I:  120, 129, 152; W. Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties (London, 1879) 332-5.

69 ESPB 1: 387, stanza 5.

70 ESPB 1: 388, stanza 5.

71 JFSS 3: 300 (first frag.), 301 (second frag.), 1909.

72 Davis A, Cox A, E, and two of my texts have Dublin. Davis B and one of my texts have no town name. Cox B has Dablin, and the rest of my variants have Duglins, Douglas, Doubleland and Dubberlin.

71 See Wayland F. Dunaway, "Pennsylvania as a Distributing Centre of Population," etc., The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania) 55: 136-9, 1931. See also H. J. Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America (Princeton: The Princeton University Press, 1915) 379, and J. C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and his Homeland (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1921) 56-9. For Scotch-Irish settlement in northern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania see also Dunaway, op. cit. 142-5; 157- 60.

74 The Fairy Mythology 2: I79.

75 Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands 41, 42. See also MacKinlay, Folk-Lore of Scottish Lakes and Springs 166 f.

76 MacKinlay, op. cit., 166; Amy Murray, Father Allan's Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920) 12.

77 Campbell, op. cit. 42, 50.

78 Other references to the banshee as washer and death-keener may be seen in Lady Gregory, Visions and Beliefs 2: 57, 59; Folk-Lore, 9: 91, 92, 1898; io: 121-3, 1899; 21: 187, 1910.

79 Revue Celtique 21: 157, 1904.

80 Folk-Lore 21: 188, 189, 1920. 81 For the "green hill" homes of Celtic fairies, see Rev. Walter Gregor, Folk-Lore of the
North-East of Scotland (London, 1881) 59, and Campbell, Superstititions of the Highlands II (a very precise and pertinent description of a typical fairy hill) and 14. References could be multiplied almost indefinitely.

82 Professor Wimberley notes this feature of Lady Alice, and compares it with the data presented in Miss Cra'ster's note on the version which concerns us; see his Death and Burial Lore in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads (University of Nebraska Studies in Literature, Language and Criticism 8. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1927) 120.

83 European Balladry 73. Examples of folklore stories with similar motifs, but not similar outlines to those of the ballads, are
W. Y. E. Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (Rennes, 19o09) ioi; Keightley, Fairy Mythology 2: 299-308 (Melusine); Hunt, Romances and Drolls 150-70; Folk-Lore 44: 288, 299 and n., 1933; T. Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends, etc. (2 vols. London, 1828) i: 59-66.

84 So says Miss Cra'ster, JFSS 3: 107, 1909; I agree.

85 For general notes on these garlands see John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, 1686-7 (London, Folk-Lore Society Publications 4, 1881) 109; J. Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities (London, 1900) 481-4; County Folk-Lore 2: 57, 58, 1901; 5: 27, 242, 1908; Lady Gurdon, Folk-Lore of Suffolk (London, 1893) 55, 56; S. Baring-Gould, A Garland of Country Song (London, 1895) 63.

86 Ten stanzas appears to be the irreducible minimum for this version: those variants telling the story in fewer stanzas always show some manifest and grave omissions.

87 See the notes of Phillips Barry on Willie Leonard, or The Lake of Cold Finn (Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast 8. Cambridge, Mass.: Powell Printing Co., 1934) o10, II.

88 I have not discussed the music of Lady Alice, as it affords no help toward clarifying the relations of the texts under discussion. For Clerk Colvill we have in English but one very badly noted tune (ESPB 5: 414). And the "Johnny Collins" and "Giles Collins" texts are set to forms of a tune so common, widespread and variously associated that it cannot be used as evidence one way or another in the solution of problems of ballad text history.