The groups #A-I# and #J-P# are distinguished by the circumstance, of no importance to the story, that the hero and heroine in the former are man and wife, in the other unmarried lovers. In all the versions (leaving out of account the fragments #O#, #P#) the family of the woman are at variance with the man. Her brothers think him an unfit match for their sister, #A# 8, #B# 2.[98] In #C# 2 the brothers have taken offence because their sister was not regarded as his equal by her husband, which is perhaps too much of a refinement for ballads, and may be a perversion. She was worth stealing in #C# as in #B#. The dispute in two or three copies appears to take the form who is the flower, or rose, of Yarrow, that is the best man, #C# 8, 9, 17, #B# 1, 12, #D# 1, 14; but this matter is muddled, cf. #C# 2, 3, #D# 2. We hear nothing about the unequal match in #D#-#I#, but in #J-L# a young lady displeases her father by refusing nine gentlemen in favor of a servant-lad. Men who are drinking together fall out and set a combat for the next day, #B-F#, #H#, #I#. It is three lords that drink and quarrel in #B#-#D# (ten (?) in #I#). The lady fears that her three brothers will slay her husband, #B# 5, #C# 5. The lord in #D# 2 seems not to be one of the three in #D# 1, and we are probably to understand that three brothers get into a brawl with a man who has surreptitiously married their sister. Only one brother is spoken of in #A# (6), from whom treachery is looked for, #E# 2. In #I-L# the father makes the servant-lad fight with the nine high-born suitors. The wife tries to keep her husband at home, #A-E#, #I#; but he is confident that all will go well, and that he shall come back to her early, #A#, #B#, #C#, #I#. She kisses (washes) and combs him, and helps to arm him, #B#, #C#, #E#, #F#, #G#, #I#; so #J#, #K#.[99] He finds nine armed men awaiting him on the braes or houms of Yarrow, #A#, #E#-#G#, #I-M#, ten #B#, #D#.[100] They ask if he has come to hawk, hunt (drink), or fight; he replies that he has come to fight, #C#, #E#, #I#; cf. #A# 5, 6. Five (four) he slays and four (five) he wounds, #A#, #B#, #D#, #E#, #I#, #J#, #K#; in #F# he kills all the nine; in #L# he gets no further than the seventh; in #G# he kills all but one. These nine, after the way of ballads, should be the lady’s brothers, and such they are in #A# 7, 8. Three of them, but only three, should be the lady’s brothers according to #B# 1–5, #C# 1–5. Three brethren are charged by the husband with a message to his lady in #D# 8, and these might be his brothers-in-law. The message is sent in #E# 9 by a good-brother, or wife’s brother, John, who clearly was not in the fight in #E#, though the husband says he is going to meet this brother John in #A# 6. This brother-in-law of #E# is probably intended by brother in #I# 8.