The passage in two of the copies, #A# 10–16, #C# 11–15, 22–25, in which the mother, pretending to be her daughter, repels the lover, and the daughter, who has dreamed that her lover had come and had been refused admittance, is told by her mother that this had actually happened, and sets off in pursuit of her lover, seems to have been adopted from ‘The Lass of Roch Royal,’ No 76. Parts are exchanged, as happens not infrequently with ballads; in the ‘Lass of Roch Royal,’ the lass is turned away by her lover’s mother, pretending to speak in his person. There is verbal correspondence, particularly in #A# 16; cf. No 76, #D# 26, 27, #E# 22, 23. In #D# 19 of No 76 the professed Love Gregor tells Annie that he has another love, as the professed Meggie in #A# 11 (inconsistently with what precedes) tells Willie. The three steps into the water, #C# 26–28, occur also in ‘Child Waters,’ No 63, #B# 7–9, #C# 6–8, #I# 3, 4, 6. Nose-bleed, #C# 1, is a bad omen; see No 208. Verses #A# 8^{1,2}, #C# 10^{1,2}, Make me your wrack as I come back, But spare me as I go, are found in a broadside ‘Tragedy of Hero and Leander,’ Roxburghe Ballads, III, 152, etc., of the date, it is thought, of about 1650; Ebsworth’s Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 558, Collier’s Book of Roxburghe Ballads, 1847, p. 227. The conceit does not overwell suit a popular ballad. The original is Martial’s Parcite dum propero, mergite cum redeo, otherwise, Mergite me, fluctus, cum rediturus ero, Epigr. lib., 25 b, and lib. xiv, 181. A very popular Italian ballad has some of the traits of ‘The Mother’s Malison,’ parts being exchanged and the girl drowned. A girl is asked in marriage; her mother objects, in most of the copies on the ground of her daughter’s youth; she goes off with her lover; the mother wishes that she may drown in the sea; arrived at the seashore her horse becomes restive, and the girl is drowned (or she goes down in mid-sea): ‘Maledizione della Madre,’ Nigra, Canti popolari del Piemonte, p. 151, No 23 #A#-#F#; ‘La Maledizione materna,’ Marcoaldi, p. 170, No 15; ‘La Maledetta,’ Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 35, No 27; ‘Buona-sera, vedovella,’ Ferraro, C. p. del Basso Monferrato, p. 16, No 7; ‘La Figlia disobbediente,’ Bolza, C. p. comasche, No 55; ‘Amor di Fratello,’ Bernoni, C. p. veneziani, Puntata 9, No 4; Righi, C. p. veronesi, p. 30, No 93; Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, No 92 (a fragment). In ‘Marinai,’ Ferraro, C. p. di Ferrara, etc., p. 59, No 9, the suitor is a sailor, and the girl goes down in his ship, and so in ‘Il marinaro e la sua amorosa,’ No 94, Wolf, but in this last she is still told to stick to her horse. A fragment in Marie Aycard’s Bal-lades et ch. p. de la Provence, p. xix, repeated in Arbaud, II, 166, makes it probable that the Italian ballad was known in the south of France. (All the above are cited by Count Nigra.)