Hi,

In fairness to Baring-Gould, the following may support authenticity:

Child Hb: from Notes and Queries- Page 354; 1884

A Lancashire Ballad (6th S. vi. 269, 418, 476; vii. 275).—Perhaps the inquirer after this ballad may be interested in hearing the Northumbrian version. As a child I was frequently told the story of the golden ball, when staying in the neighbourhood of the Cheviots, by a woman who was a native of the Borderland. Abbreviated, the tale runs as follows. There was once a poor girl who went as servant to a very rich lady. The rich lady, who was surrounded with every magnificence, possessed a golden ball which she held in very nigh esteem, and which the servant had to clean every day, being threatened with death if she was careless enough to lose it. One day whilst cleaning it beside a stream the ball slipped from her hands and disappeared. Being condemned to death, the girl mounted the scaffold and prepared to die. The story was always related so far in prose, and it was only at the scene of execution that the narrator broke into rhyme:—

"Stop the rope! Stop the rope!

For here I see my mother coming.

Oh, mother, have you brought the golden ball
And come to set me free;
Or are you only here to see me die
Upon the high, high gallows tree?"

The mother's answer was that she had only come to see her die; and all her other relations appeared, with a like result. Her lover, who was the last to come, produced the golden ball, and the execution was at once put a stop to. We have in our house two servants, both Northumbrians, who remember the story as I have related it from their childhood. I have never seen it in print.

Kate Thompson. Newcastle-upon-Tyne.