"This ballad is printed partly from an old copy in black letter, and partly from the recitation of an old lady, which appears to be the Scottish version, and is here chiefly adhered to." #D.# 3^2. hae made. 9^1. askd _should perhaps be_ left, _or_ gave, _as in_ #K^1#, #L^1#. #E.# _Burden_^2, _in MS._, 1, blown her; 2, 3, blawn her; 4, blawn my. 2^1, blow; 2^2, and a. #H.# 1^1. He speaks, _in the margin of MS_. _Burden_^1, _time in margin_. 5^1. Maid speaks, _in margin_. #I.# _Not divided regularly into stanzas in the MS._ 4^2. needlewark _in margin_. 10^1. shin? _in margin_. #L.# _After_ 6: "Then follows some more which I forget, but I think it ends thus." [13] All that was required of the burden, Mr Chappell kindly writes me, was to support the voice by harmonious notes under the melody; it was not sung _after_ each half of the stanza, or after the stanza, and it was heard separately only when the voices singing the air stopped. Even the Danish ballads exhibit but a few cases of these "burden-stems," as Grundwig calls them: see Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, II, 221, B 1; 295, B 1; 393, A 1: III, 197, D; 470, A. Such burden-stems are, however, very common in Icelandic ballads. They are, for the most part, of a different metre from the ballad, and very often not of the same number of lines as the ballad stanza. A _part_ of the burden stem would seem to be taken for the refrain; as Íslenzk Fornkvæði, I, 30, of four verses, 1, 2, 4; 129, of two, the last half of the first and all the second; 194, of four, the last; 225, of five, the last two; II, 52, of five, the second and last two. In later times the Danish stev-stamme was made to conform to the metre of the ballad, and sung as the first stanza, the last line perhaps forming the burden. Compare the stev-stamme, Grundwig, III, 470, with the first stanza of the ballad at p. 475. If not so changed, says Grundtvig, it dropped away. Lyngbye, at the end of his Færöiske Qvæder, gives the music of a ballad which he had heard sung. The whole stem is sung first, and then repeated as a burden at the end of every verse. The modern way, judging by Berggreen, Folke-Sange og Melodier, 3d ed., I, 352, 358, is simply to sing the whole stem after each verse, and so says Grundtvig, III, 200, D. The whole stem is appended to the last stanza (where, as usual, the burden, which had been omitted after stanza 1, is again expressed) in the Færöe ballad in Grundtvig, III, 199, exactly as in our broadside, or in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. iii. I must avow myself to be very much in the dark as to the exact relation of stem and burden.