Lord Thomas of Winesberry and the King's Daughter.. 305

BOOK V.

CONTINUED.

YOUNG BEICHAN AND SUSIE PYE.

AN inspection of the first hundred lines of Robert of Gloucester's Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Beket, (edited for the Percy Society by W. H. Black, vol. xix,) will leave no doubt that the hero of this ancient and beautiful tale is veritably Gilbert Becket, father of the renowned Saint Thomas of Canterbury. Robert of Gloucester's story coincides in all essential particulars with the traditionary legend, but Susie Pye is, unfortunately, spoken of in the chronicle by no other name than the daughter of the Saracen Prince Admiraud.

We have thought it well to present the three best versions of so popular and interesting a ballad. The two which are given in the body of this work are Jamieson's, from Popular Ballads, ii. 117, and ii. 127. In the Appendix is Kinloch's, from Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 260. Other printed copies are Lord Beichan, in Richardson's Borderer's Table Book, vii. 20, communicated by J. H. Dixon, who has inserted the same in Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs, Percy Society, vol. xvii. p. 85; Lord Bateman, the common VOL. IV. 1

English broadside (at p. 95 of the collection just cited); and Young Bondwell, published from Buchan's MS. in Scottish Traditionary Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 1, (Percy Soc. vol. xvii.) identical, we suppose, with the copy referred to by Motherwell in Scarce Ancient Ballads, Peterhead, 1819. There is a well-known burlesque of the ordinary English ballad, called The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, with comical illustrations by Cruikshank. On this was founded a burlesque drama, produced some years ago at the Strand Theatre, London, with great applause.

"This ballad, and that which succeeds it in this collection, (both on the same subject,) are given from copies taken from Mrs. Brown's recitation, collated with two other copies procured from Scotland, one in MS., another very good one printed for the stalls; a third, in the possession of the late Reverend Jonathan Boucher of Epsom, taken from recitation in the North of England; and a fourth, about one third as long as the others, which the Editor picked off an old wall in Piccadilly."

Jamieson's interpolations have been omitted.

IN London was young Beichan born,
He longed strange countries for to see;
But he was taen by a savage moor,
Who handled him right cruellie ;

For he viewed the fashions of that land;

Their way of worship viewed he;

But to Mahound, or Termagant,

Would Beichan never bend a knee.

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