The numerous forms of this story show a general agreement, with but little difference except as to the persons who are the object and the agent of the crime. These are, according to the Italian tradition,--which is 250 years old, while no other goes back more than a hundred years, and far the larger part have been obtained in recent years,--a young man and his true-love; and in this account unite two of the three modern Italian versions, English #A-G#, German #A#, #B#. Scott suggests that the handsome young sportsman (whom we find in English #A#, #C#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #H#) may have been exchanged for a little child poisoned by a step-mother, to excite greater interest in the nursery. This seems very reasonable. What girl with a lover, singing the ballad, would not be tempted to put off the treacherous act on so popular, though most unjustly popular, an object of aversion? A mother, again, would scarcely allow "mother" to stand, as is the case in Italian #C# and German #F#, and a singer who considered that all blood relations should be treated as sacred would ascribe the wickedness to somebody beyond that pale, say a neighbor, as the Wendish ballad does, and Zuccalmaglio's reading of German #C#. The step-mother is expressly named only in English #J#, #K c#, #L#, #M#, #N#, #O#, and in four of these, #J#, #K c#, #M#, #O#, the child has a mammie,[147] which certainly proves an _alibi_ for the step-mother, and confirms what Scott says. There is a step-aunt in German #E# and Swedish #A#, and the aunt in German #D# and the Dutch ballad, and the grandmother in English #I#, #K a#, #b#, German #C#, are perhaps meant (as the brother in Swedish #B# certainly is) to be step-relations and accommodating instruments. The poisoning is shifted to a wife in English #H#, to an uncle in English #I d#, and to a sister-in-law in the Magyar version. There is all but universal consent that the poisoning was done by serving up snakes for fish. The Magyar says a toad, English #M# a four-footed fish,[148] German #D# a well-peppered broth and a glass of red wine. English #L# adds a drink of hemlock stocks to the speckled trout; #F#, #H# have simply poison. The fish are distinctively eels in the Italian versions, and in English #A#, #D#, #E#, #G#, #I#, Swedish #B#. English #A#, #J#, #K#, #M#, #N#, #O#, German #A-D#, the Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Wendish versions, and by implication English #C#, #D#, #E# also, concur in saying that a part of the fish was given to a dog [dogs, cat, cats], and that death was the consequence. Bursting or swelling is characteristic of this kind of poisoning: German #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, English #D#, #E#, and the Dutch and Wendish versions.