Wandering Minstrel: Professor Child thought otherwise. In his synopsis he says: "She defends herself successfully, and in the morning comes in her lover, Belbordlane, or John Forsyth, well armed, and we presume well supported,...". Was there perhaps actually a Belbordlane, distinct from Breadalbane? Google finds it nowhere but in this ballad. It seems to me to be an unlikely corruption of Breadalbane; the other way around, far more likely. But if it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: Don't call him a fool; ask yourself _whose_ fool. :||