Cecil Sharp's Note 03 (1916)

No. 3. The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter

Two versions of this ballad, under the above title, are in the Roxburghe Collection and in Percy’s Reliques. Percy states that his version is “given from an old black-letter copy with some corrections,” and that it was popular in the time of Queen Elizabeth, being usually printed with her picture before it.” The fifth verse is quoted in Fletcher’s comedy of The Pilgrim (1621).

Buchan gives two traditional forms of the ballad, “Earl Richard, the Queen’s Brother,” and “Earl Lithgow” (volume ii, pp. 81–91, ed. 1828). See also Motherwell’s Minstrelsy (p. 377); Christie’s Traditional Ballad Airs of Scotland (volume i, p. 184); and Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads (pp. 15 and 25).

Kinloch says: “The Scottish language has given such a playful naïveté to these ballads that one would be apt to suppose that version to be the original, were it not that the invariable use of English titles, which are retained in all Scottish copies, betrays the ballad to have emanated from the south, although it has otherwise assumed the character of a northern production."

I have collected several variants of this ballad, four of which may be seen in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume v, pp. 86—90). For two other versions see the third volume of the same publication (pp. 222 and 280).

The words in the text have been compiled from the several sets in my possession. With the exception of the lines in the second stanza, they are printed practically without alteration.