=B.= The ballad of ‘Kellyburnbraes,’ Johnson’s Museum, No 379, p. 392, was composed by Burns, as he has himself informed us, “from the old traditional version.” “The original ballad, still preserved by tradition,” says David Laing, “was much improved in passing through Burns’s hands:” Museum, IV, *389, 1853. Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 83, 1810, gives us what he calls the “Original of Burns’s Carle of Kelly-Burn Braes,” remarking, with some effrontery, that there is reason to believe that Burns had not seen the whole of the verses which constitute this copy. Allan Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, II, 199, undertook “to make a more complete version than has hitherto appeared” out of Burns, Cromek, and some “fugitive copies.” So we get the original from none of them, but are, rather, further from it at each step. Whether =B= has come down pure, unaffected by Burns and Cromek, it is impossible to say. That it shows resemblances to both copies is not against its genuineness, if there was a fair leaven of the popular ballad in each of these reconstructions; and it is probable that there would be, at least in Burns’s. A curst wife who was a terror to demons is a feature in a widely spread and highly humorous tale, Oriental and European. See Benfey, Pantschatantra, I, 519-34; and, for a variety which is, at the beginning, quite close to our ballad, Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales, p. 39 (Afanasief, I, No 9). * * * * * Cromek’s ballad is translated by Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 93, Hausschatz, p. 230. A Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs, p. 210, Percy Society, vol. xvii. 1 There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell, (_Chorus of whistlers_) There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell, And he had a bad wife, as many knew well. (_Chorus of whistlers_) 2 Then Satan came to the old man at the plough: ‘One of your family I must have now. 3 ‘It is not your eldest son that I crave, But it is your old wife, and she I will have.’ 4 ‘O welcome, good Satan, with all my heart! I hope you and she will never more part.’ 5 Now Satan has got the old wife on his back, And he lugged her along, like a pedlar’s pack. 6 He trudged away till they came to his hall-gate; Says he, Here, take in an old Sussex chap’s mate. 7 O then she did kick the young imps about; Says one to the other, Let’s try turn her out. 8 She spied thirteen imps all dancing in chains, She up with her pattens and beat out their brains. 9 She knocked the old Satan against the wall: ‘Let’s turn her out, or she’ll murder us all.’ 10 Now he’s bundled her up on his back amain, And to her old husband he took her again. 11 ‘I have been a tormentor the whole of my life, But I neer was tormented so as with your wife.’ B