=A.= ‘The Keach i the Creel,’ Alexander Whitelaw, The Book of Scottish Ballads, p. 35, 1845; Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs, p. 112, Percy Society, vol. xvii, 1846. =B.= ‘The Creel, or, Bonnie May.’ Communicated by Mr David Louden, Morham, Haddington, 1873. =C.= ‘The Cunning Clerk,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 278, 1828. =D.= ‘The Covering Blue,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 276; Kinloch’s Ballad Book, p. 61, 1827. A few copies of =A= were printed about 1845 by a Northumbrian gentleman for private distribution. One of these came into Whitelaw’s hands, another into Dixon’s. Dixon made some changes in reprinting. Bell, Ancient Poems, etc., p. 75, 1857, and Bruce and Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy, p. 82, 1882, repeat Dixon. This last remarks that “this old and very humorous ballad has long been a favorite on both sides of the Border.” James Telfer, writing to Sir W. Scott, May 12, 1824 [Letters, XIII, No 73], says: “I have an humorous ballad sung by a few of the old people on this side of the Border. It is entitled The Keach in the Creel. It begins thus:@ A bonny may went up the street Some whitewish (_sic_) for to buy, And a bonny clerk’s faen in love with her, And he’s followed her by and by, by, And he’s followed her by and by.”@ Buchan notes, I, 319, that Motherwell had sent him a ballad “somewhat similar in incident,” taken down from the recitation of an old woman in or near Paisley. This was perhaps a copy of which the first stanza is entered in Motherwell’s Note-Book, p. 55: When I gade doun to Colliestoun, Some white-fish for to buy, buy, The cannie clarkie follows me, And he follows me spedily, -ly. Or the ballad called ‘Ricadoo’ in the Appendix to Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. xxiii, No 29, where this first stanza is given: The farmer’s daughter gade to the market, Some white-fish for to buy; The young squire followed after her, As fast as he could hie. Ricadoo, Tunaway, ricadoo a doo a day, Raddle ricadoo, Tunaway Though occurring only in a late Scottish ballad, the story is somewhat old. In Gasté, Chansons normandes du XV^e siècle, MS. de Vire, No 19, p. 15, a gentleman of Orleans causes his servants to let him down a chimney in a basket, and conceals himself under a lady’s bed. She, made aware of his presence, sends her husband off to the barn, where, she says, he will find the curé, who has made love to her. On returning, the husband gets his feet into the basket, and the servants without draw the basket up. The man cries out to his wife that the devil is making away with him.