A young man loved a farmer’s daughter, and his love was returned. The girl’s father sent her to his brother’s, forty miles off, to stay till she should change her mind. The man died. A month after, he appeared at the uncle’s at midnight, and, as he came on her father’s horse and brought with him her mother’s travelling gear, he was allowed to take the girl away with him. As they rode, he complained of headache, and the girl bound her handkerchief about his head; he was cold as clay. In two hours they were at her father’s door. The man went to put up the horse, as he said, but no more was seen of him. The girl knocked, and her father came down, much astonished to see her, and still more astonished when she asked if her lover, known by the father to be dead, had not been sent to bring her. The father went to the stable, where the girl said the man would be; there was nobody there, but the horse was found to be ‘all on a sweat.’ After conferences, the grave was opened, and the kerchief was found about the head of the mouldering body. This was told to the girl, and she died shortly after. This piece could not be admitted here on its own merits. At the first look, it would be classed with the vulgar prodigies printed for hawkers to sell and for Mopsa and Dorcas to buy. It is not even a good specimen of its kind. Ghosts should have a fair reason for walking, and a quite particular reason for riding. In popular fictions, the motive for their leaving the grave is to ask back plighted troth, to be relieved from the inconveniences caused by the excessive grief of the living, to put a stop to the abuse of children by stepmothers, to repair an injustice done in the flesh, to fulfil a promise; at the least, to announce the visitant’s death. One would not be captious with the restlessness of defeated love, but what object is there in this young man’s rising from the grave to take his love from her uncle’s to her father’s house? And what sense is there in his headache? I have printed this ballad because, in a blurred, enfeebled, and disfigured shape, it is the representative in England of one of the most remarkable tales and one of the most impressive and beautiful ballads of the European continent. The relationship is put beyond doubt by the existence of a story in Cornwall which comes much nearer to the Continental tale.[51] Long, long ago, Frank, a farmer’s son, was in love with Nancy, a very attractive girl, who lived in the condition of a superior servant in his mother’s house. Frank’s parents opposed their matching, and sent the girl home to her mother; but the young pair continued to meet, and they bound themselves to each other for life or for death. To part them effectually, Frank was shipped for an India voyage. He could not write, and nothing was heard of him for nearly three years. On All-hallows-Eve Nancy went out with two companions to sow hemp-seed. Nancy began the rite, saying: