[116] That it was not originally intended to insert ‘The Outlaw Murray’ in this collection will be apparent from the position which it occupies. I am convinced that it did not begin its existence as a popular ballad, and I am not convinced that (as Scott asserts) “it has been for ages a popular song in Selkirkshire.” But the “song” gained a place in oral tradition, as we see from =B=, =C=, and I prefer to err by including rather than by excluding. FRAGMENTS “Dispersed thro Shakspere’s plays are innumerable little fragments of ancient ballads, the entire copies of which could not be recovered,” says Bishop Percy in his preface to ‘The Friar of Orders Gray.’ What he says of Shakspere is equally true of Beaumont and Fletcher, but it is not true, in either case, that there are many fragments of popular traditional ballads. Portions of ballads of one kind or another, and still more of songs, are introduced into the plays of these authors, though not so frequently as one would suppose from Percy’s words. Ten of the twenty-eight stanzas of ‘The Friar of Orders Gray’ are taken, mostly in part only, from Shakspere and Fletcher,[117] but the original verses are from songs, not properly from ballads. It is not, however, always easy to say whether an isolated stanza belonged to a ballad or a song. Some snatches from familiar ballads, which occur in Beaumont and Fletcher, have already been given at the proper places. A few bits from unknown pieces, which occur in Shakspere, or Beaumont and Fletcher (strictly, perhaps, Fletcher), will be given here. It is surprising that other dramatists have not furnished something. A very meagre gathering of fragments from other sources follows those which have been gleaned from the dramatists, but it must be once more said that there is not an absolute certainty that all of these belong to ballads. Some popular tales are interspersed with verses of a ballad character, and one or two cases have been incidentally noted already. Examples are ‘The Paddo,’ Chambers’s Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, p. 87;[118] ‘The Red Etin,’ _ib._ p. 89; ‘The Black Bull of Norroway,’ _ib._ p. 95; ‘Child Rowland and Burd Ellen,’ Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 397;[119] ‘The Golden Ball,’ see No 95, =H=, II, 353-55. SHAKSPERE From King Lear, Act iii, sc. 4, printed 1608. Child Rowland to the darke tower came. His word was still, Fy, fo, and fumme! I smell the bloud of a British man. 1. _So_ 1623: _both quartos_, darke towne come. Act iii, sc. 6. Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepheard? Thy sheepe bee in the corne; And for one blast of thy minikin mouth Thy sheepe shall take no harme. From The Taming of the Shrew, Act iv, sc. 1, printed 1623, I, 221. It was the friar of orders gray, As he forth walked on his way. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER From The Knight of the Burning Pestle, produced apparently in 1611, Act ii, sc. 8; Dyce, II, 173.