Ancient Scottish ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before ...

NOTES
EARL RICHARD.
Bye cam a knichtfrae the king's court—p. 15, v. 1.
In place of " King's Court," one of the copies has
" the High College." Are we thence to suppose that
Earl Richard was a wild Cantab or Oxonian?
But whan I'm in the king's court,
Mitchcock is my name.—p. 15, v. 3.
The Editor is at a loss to discover the meaning of this
name, and he can only view it as a fictitious title as-
sumed by the Earl to impose on the lady. But from
her seeming previous knowledge of him, she was not
easily deceived ; and by having recourse to a learned lan-
guage to unriddle his title, she, in her turn, attempts to
deceive the knight, by making him believe that it was
solely from the " latin tongue" she knew it to be Earl
Richard.