The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
Here is a thunderclap of tragedy
: another follows
immediately. John Steward curses his
" wrath
"
:
For I have slain one of the courteousest knights
That ever bestrode a steed,
So have I done one of the fairest ladies
That ever ware woman's weed."
We guess that she is dead of grief ;
but to the
end we do not know whether Child Maurice was
or was not John Steward's son. It is his relationship
to his mother that matters.
It is impossible even to enumerate here the
fine ballads in which the situation turns on the
family relationship. Such as
they, however,
may be supposed to have originated before the
ballads of the faithless servant. Yet the horror
of " churles blood " evident in Glasgerion * belongs
to an early age, and the story of
2
Lamkin
has a very wide vogue, and is still in circulation.
In The Lord of Learne* an inversion of the very
popular " Goose-girl " story that to us seems to
belong to Grimm, we have the " false steward "
at his worst ;
but our versions of the ballad are
degenerate.
When we come to consider the list of the
English and Scottish ballads that deal with super-
1
First Series, i.
2 First Series, 196.
3 Second Series, 182
D 49