The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #157721 Message #3724619
Posted By: Richie
18-Jul-15 - 03:19 PM
Thread Name: Origins: The Golden Ball
Subject: RE: Origins: The Golden Ball
Hi,
Does anyone have any documentation that "Maid Freed" was "Composed before Chaucer's pilgrimage," as it states in Five Hundred Years of the Maid Freed from the Gallows- Reed Smith, 1928?
Also he gives a version: Johnnie Dear - two stanzas are:
"Hold up your head, dear Johnnie!
Hold it up for a while!
I think I see your sweetheart a-coming,
Walking many a mile."
"Have you brought me gold, dear sweetheart?
Have you brought me fee?
Or have you come for to see me hung
Upon this Tyburn tree?"
Anyone have access to the complete text?
Richie