76. WELL MET, WELL MET, MY OWN TRUE LOVE. The words are a cento from the lengthy ballad of the "Carpenter's Wife," which, as we have taken it down, consists of twenty verses. The black letter Broadside, "The Carpenter's Wife," is a peculiarly interesting ballad. It is the story of one Jane Reynolds of Plymouth, who had plighted her troth to a seaman. As they were about to be married, he was pressed and carried off to sea. Three years later, news arrived that he was dead, and then she married a carpenter, and lived with him for five years, and bore him three children. At the end of seven years an evil spirit assumed the likeness of her dead lover, and appeared to her, and induced her to leave with him. He carried her off, and she was never seen again. The husband, in despair, hung himself. Such is the theme of a lengthy ballad in the Roxburgh Collection, ed. Chappell, iii. p. 200. There are copies as well in the Pepys and Ewing Collections. It was printed by F. Coles (1646-1674), Gilbertson (1654-1663), Vere (1640-1680), and W. Oney (1650-1702). It was a sorry composition. Now, the traditional ballad, as compared with the printed ballad, is superior at every point. It begins abruptly with the address of the sailor to the carpenter's wife, without the long story that precedes his attempt to cajole her to elope. Moreover, there is in it no intimation that the tempter is an evil spirit in the form of the dead lover, and when she has eloped, she pines not for three, but for her one babe, whom she has deserted. Thirteen of the verses of the traditional ballad are found in "The Rambler's Garland," B.M. (1162, c 2). A form closely resembling our Devon ballad is in Buchan's "Ballads of the North of Scotland," i. p. 214, but is longer, consisting of twenty-six stanzas. Kinloch, Motherwell, and Laidlaw have also portions of it. Laidlaw, in a letter to Scott, January 3, 1803, says of the ballad, as sung to him by Walter Grieve: "He likewise sung part of a very beautiful ballad which I think you will not have seen.... The tune is very solemn and melancholy, and the effect is mixed with a considerable proportion of horror." See Child, No. 243. The printed ballad that is in the Roxburgh Collection is, I feel convinced, a clumsy re-writing of the earlier ballad, so as to convey a moral, as its title implies, "A Warning to Married Women." James Harris is the demon lover. In the traditional ballad, when the carpenter's wife has eloped, she falls into deep depression-- "I do not weep for your gold, she said, Nor do I weep for your fee, But by the masthead stands my baby dead, And I weep, I weep for my dead babie.... "She had not a-been upon the seas But six days of the week, Before that she lay as cold as clay And never a word, one word did speak. "They had not a-been upon the seas Of weeks but three and four, But down to the bottom the ship did swim And never was heard of, heard of more."