The bridegroom gae a laugh at that Amang his merry young men; Says, There's a hynd chiel in the house Runs far nearer her mind. _After 53:_ O if this be my sister dear, It's welcome news to me; I woud hae gien her thrice as much Her lovely face to see. [72] #F# 2 reads, "Bind up your hair, and tie it in your neck," which is deceptive. It was an imperative custom, as is well known, that the married woman should bind up her hair or wear it under a cap, while a maid wore it loose or in a braid; a yard long, like Chaucer's Emily, if she had as much. See #D# 3, #E# 3, #I# 5, and Prior's Danish Ballads, II, 180 f. [73] And John Armstrang her eldest brother, #C# 30: so the Scottish king was right when he weened Johnie was a king as well as he. [74] "The tradition which commonly accompanies this tale," says Jamieson, Popular Ballads, II, 83, "says that he was aware of his bride's being the sister of his mistress, and that he had courted her, not with a view of retaining her as his wife, but of securing from her father a portion for Lady Jane, whom he intended to marry:" a canny project adopted into the degenerate and interpolated #J# (st. 53), but rather too sharp practice for an old ballad. [75] The boys are all dressed in scarlet red in Danish #E# 24, #F# 27, #H# 21; so in English #E# 6, but in #J# 23 in black. [76] And the young bride throws down a half gold-ring, Fair Annie she throws down the other, And a pair of loving sisters were they, And the rings they ran together. Swedish #B# 32. [77] Vorige span, sts 14,15, for which Hoffmann reads voorgespan, meaning a fore-span. A span of horses is as absurd here as possible, but is adopted in the German version, and made to point a gibe at the king. It would seem that the Dutch _voorspan_, brooch or clasp, German spange (see Hexham's Dictionary, 1658), must have been for some time obsolete. In Richthofen's Altfriesisches Wörterbuch we find simply _span, spon_: "verstanden ist darunter ein goldener Schmuck den die friesischen Weiber _vor_ der Brust trugen." Stanza 15 is interpreted accordingly. [78] "Voorgespan" again. [79] Roquefort, Poésies de Marie de France, I, 138. There is a highly felicitous old English translation, unfortunately somewhat defective: Weber, Metrical Romances, I, 357, Ellis's Specimens, III, 282, what is missing being supplied in each case from the French.