Again, in a fabliau considerably older: ‘Du chevalier à la corbeille,’ MS. of the end of the fourteenth century, F. Michel, Gautier d’Aupais, Le chevalier à la Corbeille, Fabliaux du XIII^e siècle, p. 35; Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil général des Fabliaux, etc., II, 183. A gentleman makes appointment to visit a lady one night when her husband is away. An old woman, the husband’s mother, sleeps in a bed beside the lady’s, and keeps strict watch over her. The gentleman’s squires hoist him in a basket over the wall of the house, so that he obtains entrance into the hall, whence he passes into the lady’s chamber. The old woman observes a disturbance, and gets up, pretending that she is going to the kitchen. In the hall she goes astray and falls into the basket. The squires, noticing a movement of the cords, pull at the basket. The old woman is ‘towed’ up and down, and knocked about, much as in the ballad. She thinks that devils have carried her off. Finally the squires let the cords go, and the basket comes flat to the ground. The story is also told in Henri Estienne’s Apologie pour Hérodote, 1566; here, of a girl and her lover, and it is the girl’s father that gets his feet into the basket. Ed. Ristelhuber, 1879, I, 282 f. No one looks for decorum in pieces of this description, but a passage in this ballad, which need not be particularized, is brutal and shameless almost beyond example. * * * * * =C= is translated by Gerhard, p. 192. A Whitelaw’s Book of Scottish Ballads, p. 35; “taken down from the recitation of a gentleman in Liddesdale.” 1 A fair young may went up the street, Some white-fish for to buy, And a bonnie clerk’s faen in love wi her, And he’s followed her by and by, by, And he’s followed her by and by. 2 ‘O where live ye, my bonnie lass, I pray thee tell to me; For gin the nicht were ever sae mirk I wad come and visit thee.’ 3 ‘O my father he aye locks the door, My mither keeps the key; And gin ye were ever sic a wily wight Ye canna win in to me.’ 4 But the clerk he had ae true brother, And a wily wight was he; And he has made a lang ladder, Was thirty steps and three. 5 He has made a cleek but and a creel, A creel but and a pin; And he’s away to the chimley-top, And he’s letten the bonnie clerk in. 6 The auld wife, being not asleep, Heard something that was said; ‘I’ll lay my life,’ quo the silly auld wife, ‘There’s a man i our dochter’s bed.’ 7 The auld man he gat owre the bed, To see if the thing was true; But she’s ta’en the bonny clerk in her arms, And coverd him owre wi blue. 8 ‘O where are ye gaun now, father?’ she says, ‘And where are ye gaun sae late? Ye’ve disturbd me in my evening prayers, And O but they were sweet!’