'We'll send the marys to the wood,
But we'll keep our lady at hame.'

15.
'There's thirty marys i' my bow'r,
There's thirty o' them an' three;
But there 's nae ane amo' them a'
Kens what flow'r gains for me.'

16.
She's doen her to her bigly bow'r
As fast as she could gang,
An' she has dresst him Brown Robin
Like ony bow'r-woman.

17.
The gown she pat upon her love
Was o' the dainty green,
His hose was o' the saft, saft silk,
His shoon o' the cordwain fine.

18.
She's pitten his bow in her bosom,
His arrow in her sleeve,
His sturdy bran' her body next,
Because he was her love.

19.
Then she is unto her bow'r-door
As fast as she coud gang;
But out it spake the proud porter--
Our lady wish'd him shame--
'We'll count our marys to the wood,
And we'll count them back again.'

20.
The firsten mary she sent out
Was Brown Robin by name;
Then out it spake the king himsel',
'This is a sturdy dame.'

21.
O she went out in a May morning,
In a May morning so gay,
But she never came back again,
Her auld father to see.

[Annotations:
1.2: 'birling,' drinking: cf. 7.1.
3.1: 'bigly,' commodious: see _The Gay Goshawk_, 19.1.
3.3: 'shot-window,' here perhaps a shutter with a pane of glass let
in.
7.1: 'birl'd,' plied: cf. 1.2.
7.4: Cf. _Fause Footrage_ 16.4: a popular simile.
7.5: 'stown,' stolen: 'yates,' gates.
10.4: 'gare,' gore; _i.e._ by her knee: a stock ballad phrase.
11.4: 'gantrees,' stands for casks.
12.3: 'sic,' such: the MS. gives _sick_: 'steer,' disturbance.
13.4: 'marys,' maids.
15.4: 'gains for,' suits, is meet (Icelandic, _gegna_). Cf. Jamieson's
version of _Sir Patrick Spence_:--
'For I brought as much white money
As will gain my men and me.'
17.4: 'cordwain,' Cordovan (Spanish) leather.
21.2: 'gay': the MS. gives _gray_. This is Child's emendation, who
points out that the sun was up, 8.2.]

LADY ALICE

+The Text+ of this little ballad is given from Bell's _Ancient Poems,
Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England_.

It should be compared with _Lord Lovel_.

LADY ALICE

1.
Lady Alice was sitting in her bower-window,
At midnight mending her quoif,
And there she saw as fine a corpse
As ever she saw in her life.

2.
'What bear ye, what bear ye, ye six men tall?
What bear ye on yo