In #B#, #C#, #E#, #G#, #I#, #J# the man relents so far as, when they are in the water, to ask her to ride. She will not, #C#, #E#, #I#; he takes her on at a stone which stands in the middle of the stream, #B#, #G#, #J#. The stream is Clyde in #B#, #C#, #E#, #G#, #J#; the Tay in #I#. In #C#, #E#, #F#, #H# he tells her after they have passed the water, that it is three and thirty miles to his house; a (poetically) superfluous and meddling parrot says it is but three. In #C#, #G# he tells her that she will have a serving-man for a husband, and in #H# that he has already wife and bairns. One stroke in #A#, the sending of Ellen to fetch a woman from the town, is wanting in the other versions, decidedly to their advantage. This exaggeration of insult, submitting to which only degrades the woman, is paralleled, though not quite reached, by the paramour in the forest in the otherwise exquisitely refined tale of The Nut-Brown Maid. As for the ballad, the disagreeable passage may be an insertion of some unlucky singer, and the perfect truth to nature and remarkably high taste of The Nut-Brown Maid, in every other particular, would almost drive us to assume an interpolation in this case too. #E# 1, 2, 16, #F# 2, 3 show contact with the ballad of 'Lizzie Lindsay;' the passing of the water, particularly in #E# 8-12, with 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter;' and again, #H# 21. An exceedingly popular Scandinavian ballad is manifestly of the same source, though the story is told in a very different way, the cruel trials to which the woman's love is put being entirely lacking: #Danish#, 'Jomfru og Stalddreng,' Grundtvig, V, 171, No 267, #A-A#. #Swedish#, #A#, 'Liten Kerstin Stalldräng,' Afzelius, II, 15, No 33; #B#, 'Stolts Botelid Stalldräng,' Afzelius, II, 20, No 34; #C-E#, 'Liten Kerstin Stalldräng,' Arwidsson, II, 179, No 109, Hofberg's Nerikes gamla Minnen, p. 254, Öberg in Aminson, I, 28; #F-I#, from Cavallius and Stephens's manuscript collection, Grundtvig, V, 217 f; #J#, 'Liten Kerstin och Dane-Peter,' Wigström, Folkdiktning, #I#, 66, No 32. #Norwegian#, #A#, 'Liti Kersti som stalldreng,' Landstad, p. 605, No 78; #B-E#, Grundtvig, V, 218-20; #F#, Landstad, p. 605, note. (Several of these are only a verse or two.) Danish #A-F# are from manuscripts of the sixteenth or seventeenth century; #G# was printed at the end of the seventeenth; the other copies are from recent tradition, but nevertheless point to a higher antiquity than those which were taken down earlier. There is naturally much variation in details among so many copies, and it will be sufficient to indicate the general character of the story. A young woman, who may be called Kirstin, clips her hair and puts on man's clothes, seeks service at court, and is taken as stable-boy, at the instance of a man (often the king's son, or of other high rank) who may be called Peter, with whom she, in some copies, seems to have had a previous connection. Peter, as