The copy of this ballad in the Percy manuscript, the only one known to exist, shows very great carelessness on the part of the transcriber, or of some predecessor. It begins with these two stanzas, which manifestly belong to an historical ballad, and have only a verbal connection with what follows: Jesus, lord mickle of might, _Th_at dyed ffor us on the roode, To maintaine vs in all our right[65] _Th_at loues true English blood. Ffor by a k_nigh_t I say my song, Was bold and ffull hardye; S_i_r Robert Briuse wold fforth to ffight, In-to Ireland ouer the sea. There is a large omission after the 125th verse (the 28th stanza as here printed), though the writing is continuous. There are also several difficult or unintelligible passages, even more than are usually met with in this manuscript. As published in the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, I, 35, ed. 1765, I, 41, ed. 1794, 'Sir Cawline' is extended to nearly twice the amount of what is found in the manuscript, and a tragical turn is forced upon the story. I have said that the copy of 'Sir Cawline' in the Percy manuscript is the only one known. There are nevertheless two Scottish ballads, one hitherto unpublished and one printed by Buchan, which narrate Sir Colvin's winning the king's daughter by vanquishing the elritch knight. These, I conceive, however, to be simple rifacimenti of the ballad in Percy's Reliques. They will be given in an appendix. 'Sir Cawline' may possibly be formed upon a romance in stanzas[66] which itself was composed from earlier ballads. There are two adventures in the ballad, one with an elritch knight, and a second with a five-headed giant who is at the same time a hend soldan, and there seem to be traces of another in the now unintelligible twenty-ninth stanza. The first adventure, though not of the same commonplace description as the second, is still by no means unique. We are immediately reminded of the beautiful romance of Eger, Grime and Gray-Steel: how Gray-Steel kept a forbidden country beyond seven days of wilderness, and how Grime slew the up to that time unmatched Gray-Steel with the sword Erkyin [Egeking], brought from beyond the Greekës sea, and cut off his hand, with fingers thrice a common man's size, and on every finger a gay gold ring.[67] Gray-Steel, to be sure, is pictured rather as a giant than an elf, but still gives the impression of something out of the ordinary, as having perhaps lost an elritch character in the course of tradition. The elritch knight in our ballad haunts the moors, far from any good town, like Grendel, who held the moors and fens, but there is only a hint of that supernatural terror which attends the awful "march-stepper" in Beówulf. Gervase of Tilbury has a story of an ancient entrenchment in the bishopric of Ely, where anybody could have a passage at arms with an unearthly warrior, by moonlight only, by simply calling out, "Come, knight,