[wintemberg] lord LOVEL AND LADY NANCY 25 



sometimes in the higher or lower chancel, in the high chapel, by the 

 church door, and "in the east" and "in the west" of the church. Often, 

 too, they are buried "beyond Kirk wa'," in the churchyard, in the 

 "cold" churchyard, sometimes one in one churchyard and the other 

 in another, but rarely beside each other. In one ballad the lover is 

 "laid in the mire." In many of the ballads the names of the churches 

 are given: St. Bernard's — as in our version, — St. Paneras, St. Peter's, 

 St. Patrick's, St. John's, and Marie's, Lady Mary's, or St. Mary's. 

 It might be of interest to note that most of the ballads in which the 

 name is given as "Marie's church" are from Scotland. These may 

 have been influenced by "The Douglas Tragedy," which was supposed 

 by Sir Walter Scott to be founded in some actual event.^ 



The plants springing from the graves, in all these ballads, are 

 the rose or the brier, and the birch. The roses are most frequently 

 described as red or blood red. Lily-white roses occur in only two 

 variants^ and a green one in another,^ which last must refer to the 

 color of the bush. They usually spring from the grave itself, some- 

 times from the heart or breast of one of the lovers, and grow to the 

 "church-steeple top," or to the top of the church, where, in most 

 instances, they twine together "in a true lovers' knot."* 



Several ballads have an additional stanza describing the subse- 

 quent destruction of the plants. In one of these (Child's A), it is: 



"An old wowman coming by that way, 

 And a blessing she did crave, 

 To cut off a bunch of that true lover's not 

 And bury them both in one grave." 



In "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" we find a different form: 



"Then came the clerk of the parish, 

 As you the truth shall hear, 

 And by misfortune cut them down, 

 Or they had now been there. "^ 



^ Scott, in a note to "The Douglas Tragedy," says "the chapel of St. Mary, 

 whose vestiges may still be traced upon the lake, to which it has given name, is said 

 to have been the burial place of Lord William and Fair Margaret," the hero and 

 heroine in the tragedy. {Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. Ill, pp. 244-245.) 



2 Child's "Lord Lovel" E, stanza 9; also in a version of "Barbara Allen," in 

 the Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXVIII, p. 145. 



3 "Lady Marget" (9), ibid., p. 155. 



* In Child's "Lord Lovel" I, stanza 17, 



"The tops of them grew far sundry, 

 But the roots of them grew neer." 

 = Percy's Reliques. 



