Fair Janet, #A#, #B#, #E# [Annet, Maisry], loving Sweet Willie, and on the point of becoming a mother by him, is destined by her father to marry a French lord, #A#; a Southland lord, #B#, #E#, #G#. She implores Willie to fly with her over sea, #B#, #C#; to good green wood, #F#. They set sail, but her condition obliges her to return, #B#; her time comes before they can get away, #C#. She bears a child.[84] To avoid discovery, the babe is taken to Willie's mother, who very readily assumes charge of it. Scarcely has the child been born, when Janet's father comes with orders to busk the bride, #A#, #B#, #C# (?), #E#, #F#. She begs to be tenderly handled, as not being in good plight. They attire her gayly, and she selects Willie to lead her horse, or ride before her on her horse, to church, #A#, #B#, #E#. Her cheek is pale, her color goes and comes; it is suspected, and even suggested, that she has borne a bairn, or is near to doing so, #A# 22, #C# 14, #D# 10, #E# 11, #F# 25. She seeks to clear herself by an ambiguous oath, #E# 12, #G# 26, 27; Willie does this for her, #G# 11. After dinner, or supper, #A#, #B#, dancing is in order. Janet makes excuses to her brothers, her father, the bridegroom's man, and declines very decidedly the bridegroom's own invitation, with marked asperity in #A#, #B#. But with Willie she will dance though her heart should break in three. She takes three turns, and falls down dead. Willie gives the key of his coffer to his man, and bids him tell his mother that his horse has slain him. He would not survive Janet in any pure and full form of the story, and does not in #A#, #C#, #E#. 'Sweet William,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 307, borrows some stanzas at the beginning from 'Fair Janet.' There are points of resemblance between 'Fair Janet' and a ballad very popular in Scandinavia and in Germany, which demand notice, though they may not warrant the assumption of community of origin. The Scandinavian ballad is: #Danish#, 'Kong Valdemar og hans Søster,' Grundtvig, No 126, III, 63 ff, 911 f, #A-I#; #G# from a sixteenth-century manuscript, #A-F# from seventeenth-century manuscripts or print, the two last from recent tradition. #Icelandic#, 'Soffíu kvæði,' Íslenzk Fornkvæði, No 52, II, 152, #A-F#, all of which, according to Grundtvig, must be put, at latest, in the seventeenth century, though some are first met with in the eighteenth. #Färoë#, a single copy, almost Danish, from the beginning of this century, printed by Grundtvig, III, 67 f. #Norwegian#, three copies from recent tradition, Grundtvig, III, 69, 913 f. #Swedish#, all from this century, 'Liten Kerstin och Fru Sofia,' Arwidsson, No 53, I, 335-51, #A-E#; #F#, #G#, in Cavallius and Stephens' collection, Grundtvig, III, 70; #H#, 'Liten Kerstin och drottning Sofia,' Wigström, Folkdiktning, I, 79.[85]