_After 20 Jamieson introduced these two stanzas of his own_, "the idea of the rose being suggested by the gentleman who recited, but who could not recollect the language in which it was expressed:" But up and spak her midmaist brother, And an angry laugh leugh he: 'The thorn that dabs, I'll cut it down, Though fair the rose may be. 'The flower that smelld sae sweet yestreen Has lost its bloom wi thee; And though I'm wae it should be sae, Clerk Saunders, ye maun die.' _After 23 follow ten stanzas, which are transferred to_ 'Sweet William's Ghost.' #G.# 32^6. you to speak again. [101] But it is, of course, not impossible that there may have been such a conclusion to 'Clerk Saunders.' It may be mentioned, though not as an argument, that there was a ballad in Boccaccio's time (of which he cites the first two lines), on the story of G. iv, N. 5, of the Decamerone; a tale in which three brothers kill their sister's lover, and bury the body in a solitary place, and his ghost appears and informs the sister of what had happened. [102] Buchan 1, 2==#B# 1, 2; 3-9==#A# 3-9; 11==#A# 10; 12==#B# 11; 15 is made from #A# 12; 16==#B# 16; 17==#A# 15; 23-25==#A# 21, 22, 20; 26-29 are made from #A# 24-26, 23. The fatuity of 13^2, 14^2 is such as is found nowhere out of Buchan. The stanza given in the Appendix to Motherwell's Minstrelsy, xix, XVI, is Scott's 13. [103] We may suppose that all the three versions, two of them fragmentary, which Jamieson combined, contained the passage which furnishes the link: but it would be much more satisfactory if Jamieson had given us all three as he received them. [104] Icelandic #A-C# have an introductory incident not found in #E-H#. There is a trace of this in #D#, and it occurs also in two other ballads, #I#, #K#, of the same series, which lack the feature that #A-H# and English #F# have in common. A king finds a young child that has been left on or in the cleft of a rock, takes it with him, and rides to his daughter's bower. He asks his daughter who the fair swain is that he has found, and how it comes to have her eyes. She feigns ignorance and indifference: many a man is like another. Then come the questions found in the other versions. [105] "Goes brain," perhaps, as the editors suggest, like Lady Maisry in 'Lord Ingram,' and others in Scottish ballads. [106] These are translated by Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 424, Prior, II, 378; W. and M. Howitt, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, I, 261. [107] Fernan Caballero had another Andalusian version besides this. 70 WILLIE AND LADY MAISRY #A.# 'Willie, the Widow's Son,' Motherwell's MS., p. 498; 'Sweet Willie and Lady Margerie,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 370. #B.# 'Willie and Lady Maisry,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I. 155.