A PEPYSIAN GARLAND - online book

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53 The western knight Pepys, i, 312, B.L., four woodcuts, four columns. This ballad was licensed as "Western Knight" on June 1, 1629 (Arber's Transcript, iv, 213). It is a romance with possibly a traditional ballad as a source and with a few traditional features. Of somewhat similar nature are "The False Lover Won Back" and "Child Waters" in F. J. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Nos. 63 and 218). Even closer is the resemblance to the early part of Child's No. 4, "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight," which in one stall copy (dating about 1749) ^1S> ^as Professor Child noted (op. cit. 1, 23), called "The Western Tragedy." Professor Kittredge remarks that the Harvard College Library has an American edition of "The Western Tragedy" that was printed late in the eighteenth, or early in the nineteenth, century. To a pretty amorous tune. i IT was a yong knight borne in the West, that led a single life, And for to marry he thought it best because he lackt a wife. 2 And on a day he him bethought, as he sate all alone, How he might be to acquaintance brought, with some yong pretty one. 3 What luck, alas, (quoth he) haue I to Hue thus by my selfe? Could I find one of faire beauty, I would not sticke for pelfe.
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