#A. a.# 'Fair Margaret's Misfortune,' etc., Douce Ballads, I, fol. 72. #b.# 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William,' Ritson, A Select Collection of English Songs, 1783, II, 190. #c.# 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William,' Percy's Reliques, 1765, III, 121. #d.# Percy's Reliques, 1767, III, 119. #B.# Percy Papers; communicated by the Dean of Derry, February, 1776. #C.# Percy Papers; communicated by Rev. P. Parsons, April 7, 1770. #A#, #a#, #b#, #c# are broadside or stall copies, #a# of the end of the seventeenth century, #b# "modern" in Percy's time, and they differ inconsiderably, except that #a# has corrupted an important line.[118] Of #d#, Percy says, Since the first edition some improvements have been inserted, which were communicated by a lady of the first distinction, as she had heard this song repeated in her infancy. Herd, in The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 295, follows Percy. As Percy has remarked, the ballad is twice quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle,' 1611. Stanza 5 runs thus in Act 2, Scene 8, Dyce, II, 170: When it was grown to dark midnight, And all were fast asleep, In came Margaret's grimly ghost, And stood at William's feet. The first half of stanza 2 is given, in Act 3, Scene 5, Dyce, p. 196, with more propriety than in the broadsides, thus: You are no love for me, Margaret, I am no love for you. The fifth stanza of the ballad, as cited in 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle,' says the editor of the Reliques, has "acquired an importance by giving birth to one of the most beautiful ballads in our own or any language" [that is, 'Margaret's Ghost'], "the elegant production of David Mallet, Esq., who, in the last edition of his poems, 3 vols, 1759, informs us that the plan was suggested by the four verses quoted above, which he supposed to be the beginning of some ballad now lost."[119] The ballad supposed to be lost has been lately recovered, in a copy of the date 1711, with the title 'William and Margaret, an Old Ballad,' and turns out to be substantially the piece which Mallet published as his own in 1724, Mallet's changes being comparatively slight. 'William and Margaret' is simply 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William' rewritten in what used to be called an elegant style. Nine of the seventeen stanzas are taken up with a rhetorical address of Margaret to false William, who then leaves his bed, raving, stretches himself on Margaret's grave, thrice calls her name, thrice weeps full sore, and dies. See The Roxburghe Ballads, in the Ballad Society's reprint, III, 671, with Mr Chappell's remarks there, and in the Antiquary, January, 1880. The ballad of 1711 seems to have been founded upon some copy of the popular form earlier than any we now possess, or than any known to me, for the last half of stanza 5 runs nearly as it occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher (see also #B# 7), thus: