#A#, far the best preserved of the German versions, makes a hunter ask a count for his sister Annchristine. Being refused, as an unequal match, he tells the count that his sister, for all her nobility, has borne a child. The count maintains Annchristine to be a maid. The hunter says, Send for her, and see. The young lady is required to come on horseback. When her brother sees her approaching, with her long hair flowing, his confidence is strengthened. The hunter says, Make her dance. She dances seven hours, and her brother finds reason to continue of the same mind as before. The hunter says, Let us tighten her lacing, and, when that is done, milk springs from her breasts. Her brother gives her the choice between whipping and the sword. She chooses the former. He beats her till liver and lungs spring from her body. She then calls on him to stop; Prince Frederick of England is his brother-in-law. The count is much troubled, and promises everything if she will live. But Annchristine dies, and presently Prince Frederick appears. He has heard of what the count has done, cuts him to bits, and gives him to the crows. In the other German versions the informant is generally of low rank, and sometimes professes to be father of the child. In #B#, #C#, #G#, #H#, #K# he is a kitchey-boy, a personage who plays no insignificant part in romantic story. The coming on horseback is wanting. The long dance is found in #B-F#. The father of the child is always the English King, who runs the brother through with his sword, #B#, #D#, #E#, #G#, #K#, #L#, or otherwise gives him his due. The slight resemblance and the great difference of the Scottish story are apparent. Fair Janet has to go a certain distance on horseback, at a time when she is peculiarly ill fitted to do so, like the hapless Kirstin of the Scandinavian ballads and the German #A#, and she dies from dancing in her weak condition, as the lady does in the Icelandic and Färöe ballad. But both the ride and the dance are incidental to her forced marriage, and neither the ride nor the dance is employed as a test, as the dance always is in the other ballad, and as the ride is expressly devised to be in German #A# 6. The Scottish Janet is not constrained to dance, nor does she dance down all the men in the room. She declines every invitation except Willie's, and this, in some cases, she (very naturally and touchingly) encourages or incites; and her vital powers give way after three turns. All the unspeakably ferocious features of the Norse and German ballads are wanting, and the bound which divides the pathetic from the horrible is never passed.