All these are a dialogue between mother and son, with a question and answer in each stanza. The mother asks, Where have you been? The son replies that he has been in the stable [Danish, grove, fields; Finnish #A#, on the sea-strand]. "How is it that your foot is bloody?"[153] [clothes, shirt; Finnish, "How came your jerkin muddy?" etc.] A horse has kicked or trod on him. "How came your sword so bloody?" He then confesses that he has killed his brother. [Swedish #D# and the Danish copies have no question about the foot, etc.] Then follows a series of questions as to what the son will do with himself, and what shall become of his wife, children, etc., which are answered much as in the English ballad. Finally, in all, the mother asks when he will come back, and he replies (with some variations), When crows are white. And that will be? When swans are black. And that? When stones float. And that? When feathers sink, etc. This last feature, stupidly exaggerated in some copies, and even approaching burlesque, is one of the commonplaces of ballad poetry, and may or may not have been, from the beginning, a part of the ballads in which it occurs. Such a conclusion could not be made to adhere to 'Edward,' the last stanza of which is peculiar in implicating the mother in the guilt of the murder. Several versions of 'The Twa Brothers' preserve this trait, and 'Lizie Wan' also. The stanza of this ballad was originally, in all probability, one of two lines--a question and an answer--with refrains, as we find it in #A# 10, 11, 12, and the corresponding Swedish and Finnish ballad; and in 'Lord Randal,' #J#, #K#, etc., and also the corresponding Swedish and German ballad. #A# 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 are now essentially stanzas of one line, with refrains; that is, the story advances in these at that rate. #A# 4, 7 (==#C#) are entirely irregular, substituting narrative or descriptive circumstances for the last line of the refrain, and so far forth departing from primitive simplicity.[154] The stanza in #B# embraces always a question and a reply, but for what is refrain in other forms of the ballad we have epical matter in many cases. #A# 1, 2, substantially,==#B# 1; #A# 3, 4==#B# 2; #A# 5, 6==#B# 3; #A# 8, 9==#B# 4; #A# 11==6; #A# 12==7. Testaments such as this ballad ends with have been spoken of under No 11. * * * * * #A# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 26, p. 172; by Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. L., No 21, p. 96; by Wolff, Halle des Völker, I, 22, and Hausschatz, p. 223. #B#, in Afzelius, III, 10; "often in Danish," Grundtvig; by Herder, Volkslieder, II, 207; by Döring, p. 217; Gerhard, p. 88; Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 27. Swedish #A#, by W. and M. Howitt, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, I, 263.[155] A #a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 139. From Mrs King, Kilbarchan. #b.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 339.