We owe the preservation of this beautiful old ballad to _Arnold's Chronicle_, of which the earliest edition is thought to have been printed in 1502. In Laneham's account of Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth, the _Nut-brown Maid_ is mentioned as a book by itself, and there is said to be at Oxford a list of books offered for sale at that place in 1520, among which is the _Not-Broon Mayd_, price one penny; still, the ballad is not known to exist at present in any other ancient form than that of the Chronicle. We have no means of determining the date of the composition, but Percy has justly remarked that it is not probable that an antiquary would have inserted a piece in his historical collections which he knew to be modern. The language is that of the time at which it was printed. The ballad seems to have been long forgotten, when it was revived in _The Muse's Mercury_ for June, 1707, (Percy.) There Prior met with it, and, charmed with its merit, he took the story for the foundation of his _Henry and Emma_. Capel, in 1760, published a collated text from two different editions of the Chronicle,--we suppose that of 1502, and the second, which was printed in 1521, and exhibits some differences. Percy adopted Capel's text with a few alterations, (_Reliques_, ii. 30.) The text of the edition of 1502 has been twice reprinted since Percy's time: in the _Censura Literaria_, vol. i. p. 15, and by Mr. Wright, in a little black-letter volume, London, 1836. We have adopted Mr. Wright's text, not neglecting to compare it with that of Sir Egerton Brydges. It will be interesting to compare with this matchless poem a ballad in other languages, which has the same drift;--_Die Lind im Thale_, or _Liebesprobe_, Erk, _Deutscher Liederhort_, p. 1, 3; Uhland, No. 116; Hoffmann, _Schlesische_ V. L., No. 22, _Niederl[:a]ndische V. L._, No. 26; Haupt and Schmaler, _V. L. der Wenden_, i. 72 (Hoffmann). In the sixteenth century a ridiculous attempt was made to supplant the popular ballads in the mouths and affections of the people by turning them into pious parodies. _The Nut-Brown Maid_ was treated in this way, and the result may be seen in _The New Not-borune Mayd_, printed by the Roxburghe Club, and by the Percy Society, vol. vi. "Be it right or wrong, these men among On women do complaine, Affermyng this, how that it is A labour spent in vaine To love them wele, for never a dele 5 They love a man agayne: For lete a man do what he can Ther favour to attayne, Yet yf a newe do them pursue,[L9] Ther furst trew lover than 10 Laboureth for nought, and from her thought He is a bannished man."