THE FRIAR IN THE WELL =A. a.= ‘The Fryer well fitted,’ etc., Rawlinson Ballads, 566, fol. 63, 4°. =b.= ‘The Fryer well fitted,’ etc., Roxburghe Ballads, II, 172; Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VII, 222. =c.= ‘The Fryer and the Maid,’ Wit and Mirth, or, Pills to purge Melancholy, “I, 340, 1707,” III, 325, 1719. =B. a.= ‘The Friar and Fair Maid,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 351. =b.= ‘The Friar,’ Kinloch MSS, VI, 97. =c.= Kinloch MSS, V, 60. The broadside, =A a=, =b=, is found in many other collections: Pepys, III, 145, No 143; Crawford, No 94, etc. (see Ebsworth). =B=, the Scottish ballad (an improvement on the English), is without doubt derived from print, but not directly from =A a=, =b=. In =B= the maid feigns to be afraid of her master, as in =A c=, not of her father. From Halliwell’s Notices of Fugitive Tracts, p. 37, No 49, Percy Society, vol. xxix, we learn that The Royal Garland of Protestant Delight, London, 1689, has a ballad with the title ‘The witty lass of Somersetshire, or the fryer servd in his kind,’ with an “answer,” in the last stanza of which ‘the inn-keeper, her master,’ laughs at the fryer’s disaster. The tune of ‘The Friar in the Well’ occurs in The Dancing Master, from 1650 to 1686: Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 274. Munday, in his ‘Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington,’ Act iv, Scene 2, 1598, refers to the ‘merry jest ... how the friar fell into the well, for love of Jenny, that fair bonny belle.’ A reference of Skelton’s in his Colyn Cloute[88] carries the story, and almost certainly the ballad, back to the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The copy in Kinloch’s Ballad Book, p. 25, was compounded by the editor from =B b=, =c=. A maid, solicited by a friar, says that she fears hell-fire; the friar reminds her that if she were in hell he could sing her out. She stipulates for money in advance; while the friar is gone to fetch some, she hangs (spreads) a cloth before (over) a well. The money in band, she calls out that her father (master) is coming; the friar runs to hide behind the cloth (a screen), and falls into the well. The friar cries for help; he is left to sing himself out. Extricated after a sufficient cooling, he asks his money back, but is told that he must pay for fouling the water.