Hi,

In my first post: "In Zepo Town" was taken from Lisha Shelton's version known in Appalachia "in Seaport Town" (Sharp EFFSA).

I have a theory about analogues like the one found in Boccaccio's "The Decameron" (see translation my last post). Most analogues are like Jungian archtypes; there are themes common to humankind. These common themes provoke similar stories in many different cultures. Just because the story is the same doesn't mean that a version in one country or culture is based or taken from another-- the same story can spring from a similat or sometime nearly identical situation.

In the case of The Bramble Briar I quote Norman Cazden, ‎Herbert Haufrecht, ‎Norman Studer - 1982 from the book, "Folk Songs of the Catskills" who first mention Boccaccio:

"Four German poems written between 1515 and 1548 by Hans Sachs, the noted Meistersinger, derive from that story, as does also the poem Isabella by John Keats. None of these forms seem to have had a direct influence on the text lines or the images of the two ballad strains. It may be more fruitful to regard the core of the tale as a popular theme, probably handed down in oral tradition since long before Boccaccio, with its various literary renderings, broadside ballad texts, and possibly other outcroppings constituting particular formulations or crystallizations."

Richie