- John Dory
The Text is from Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia (1609), the only text that has come down to us of a 'three-man's song' which achieved extraordinary popularity during' the seventeenth century.
The Story.--'Good King John of France' is presumed to be John II., who was taken prisoner at the battle of Poictiers and died in 1364. But the earliest literary reference to this ballad occurs in the play of Gammar Gurton's Needle, acted in 1566, where the song 'I cannot eat but little meat' is to be sung 'to the tune of John Dory.' From Carew's Survey of Cornwall (1602) we learn a little more: 'Moreover, the prowess of one Nicholas, son to a widow near Foy [Fowey], is descanted upon in an old three-man's song, namely, how he fought bravely at sea with John Dory (a Genowey, as I conjecture), set forth by John, the French king, and, after much bloodshed on both sides, took, and slew him, in revenge of the great ravine and cruelty which he had fore committed upon the Englishmen's goods and bodies.'
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- Johnny O' Cockley's Well
The Text is taken almost entirely from a copy which was sent in 1780 to Bishop Percy by a Miss Fisher of Carlisle; in the last half of the first stanza her version gives, unintelligibly:
'But little knew he that his bloody hounds
Were bound in iron bands':
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- Bessy Bell And Mary Gray
The Text is from Sharpe's Ballad Book. A parody of this ballad, concerning an episode of the end of the seventeenth century, shows it to have been popular not long after its making. In England it has become a nursery rhyme (see Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes, p. 246).
The Story.--In 1781 a Major Barry, then owner of Lednock, recorded the following tradition. Mary Gray was the daughter of the Laird of Lednock, near Perth, and Bessy Bell was the daughter of the Laird of Kinvaid, a neighbouring place. Both were handsome, and the two were intimate friends. Bessy Bell being come on a visit to Mary Gray, they retired, in order to avoid an outbreak of the plague, to a bower built by themselves in a romantic spot called Burnbraes, on the side of Branchie-burn, three-quarters of a mile from Lednock House. The ballad does not say how the 'pest cam,' but tradition finds a cause for their deaths by inventing a young man, in love with both, who visited them and brought the infection. They died in the bower, and were buried in the Dranoch-haugh ('Stronach haugh,' 3.3), near the bank of the river Almond. The grave is still visited by pious pilgrims.
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- The Friar In The Well
The Text is taken from Buchan's MSS., the Scots version being rather more condensed than the corresponding English broadside. There is a reference to this ballad in Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington (1598); but earlier still, Skelton hints at it in Colyn Cloute.
The Story can be paralleled in French, Danish, and Persian ballads and tales, but is simple enough to have been invented by almost any people. Compare also the story of The Wright's Chaste Wife by Adam of Cobsam, E.E.T.S., 1865, ed. F. J. Furnivall.
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- Lady Isabel And The Elf-knight
The Text is taken from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, where it is entitled The Gowans sae gay. This ballad is much better known in another form, May Colvin (Collin, Collean).
The Story.--Professor Child says, 'Of all ballads this has perhaps obtained the widest circulation,' and devotes thirty-two pages to its introduction. Known in the south as well as in the north of Europe, the Germans and Scandinavians preserve it in fuller and more ancient forms than the Latin nations.
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