An early form of this story is preserved in the _Gesta Romanorum_. A king resolved not to marry a wife till he could find the cleverest of women. At length a poor maid was brought to him, and he made trial of her sagacity. He sent her a bit of linen three inches square, and promised to marry her, if out of it she could make him a shirt. She stipulated in reply that he should send her a vessel in which she could work. We have here only a mutilated fragment of the series of tasks set. In an old English ballad in the Pepysian library, an Elfin knight visits a pretty maid, and demands her in marriage. “‘Thou must shape a sark to me Without any cut or heme,’ quoth he. ‘Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerless And also sue it needle-threadless.’” She replies:-- “I have an aiker of good ley-land Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand. For thou must car it with thy horn, So thou must sow it with thy corn, And bigg a cart of stone and lyme. Robin Redbreast he must trail it hame, Thou must barn it in a mouse-holl, And thrash it into thy shoes sole. And thou must winnow it in thy looff, And also sech it in thy glove. For thou must bring it over the sea, And thou must bring it dry home to me.” As the Elfin knight cannot fulfil these tasks, the girl is not obliged to follow him to Elfin Land. There is another song, known in a fragmentary condition all through England:-- “Cold blows the wind to-night, sweetheart, Cold are the drops of rain. The very first love that ever I had In greenwood he was slain.” The maiden being engaged to the dead man can obtain no release from him till he restores to her her freedom. She goes and sits on his grave and weeps. “A twelvemonth and a day being up, The ghost began to speak; Why sit you here by my grave side From dusk till dawning break?” She replies:-- “O think upon the garden, love, Where you and I did walk; The fairest flower that blossomed there Is withered on its stalk.” The ghost says:-- “What is it that you want of me, And will not let me sleep? Your salten tears they trickle down My winding sheet to steep.” She replies that she has come to return his kisses to him, so as to be off with her engagement. To this the dead man replies:-- “Cold are my lips in death, sweetheart, My breath is earthy strong, If you do touch my clay-cold lips, Your time will not be long.” Then comes a divergence in the various forms the ballad assumes. Its most common form is for the ghost to insist on her coming into his grave, unless she can perform certain tasks:-- “Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep, Wring water from a stone, And likewise milk from a maiden’s breast Which never babe hath none.” She strikes a spark from a flint, she squeezes an icicle, and she compresses the stalk of a dandelion or “Johnswort.” So she accomplishes the tasks set her. Then the ghost exclaims:--