"blawing his horn, The first morning in May," and this more tuneful version retains in the first two stanzas a fading trace of the fairy element and the magic music, the bird, whose song may be supposed to have caused the lady's heartache, being possibly the harper in elfin disguise. In most of the versions, however, the knight is merely a human knave, usually designated as Fause Sir John, and the lady is frequently introduced as May Colven or Colvin or Collin or Collean, though also as Pretty Polly. The story is widely circulated, appearing in the folk-songs of nearly all the nations of northern and southern Europe. It has been suggested that the popular legend may be "a wild shoot from the story of Judith and Holofernes." _Dowie_, doleful. TOM THUMBE. After Ritson, with omissions. Ritson prints from a manuscript dated 1630, the oldest copy known to be extant, but the story itself can be traced much further back and was evidently a prime favorite with the English rustics. The plain, often doggerel verse, and the rough, often coarse humor of this ballad make it appear at striking disadvantage among the Scottish folk-songs, essentially poetic as even the rudest of them are. Tom Thumbe, it must be confessed, is but a clumsy sort of elf, and the ballad as a whole can hardly be said to have a fairy atmosphere. Yet it is of value as adding to the data for a comparison between the English and the Scottish peasantry, as throwing light on the fun-loving spirit, the sports and practical joking of Merrie England, as showing the tenacity of the Arthurian tradition, together with the confusion of chivalric memories, as displaying the ignorant credulity of the popular mind toward science no less than toward history, and as illustrating, by giving us in all this bald, sing-song run of verses, here and there a sweet or dainty fancy and at least one stanza of exquisite tenderness and grace, the significant fact that in the genuine old English ballads beauty is not the rule, but the surprise. _Counters_, coin-shaped pieces of metal, ivory, or wood, used in reckoning. _Points_, here probably the bits of tin plate used to tag the strands of cotton yarn with which, in lieu of buttons, the common folk fastened their garments. The points worn by the nobles were laces or silken strands ornamented with aiglets of gold or silver. KEMPION. After Allingham's version collated from copies given by Scott, Buchan, and Motherwell, with a touch or two from the kindred ballad _The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh._ Buchan and Motherwell make the name of the hero Kemp Owyne. Similar ballads are known in Iceland and Denmark, and the main features of the story appear in both the classic and romantic literatures. _Weird_, destiny. _Dree_, suffer. _Borrowed_, ransomed. _Arblast bow_, cross-bow. _Stythe_, place. _Louted_, bowed.