26 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The concluding verse in Child's variant A of "Lady Alice": 



"The priest of the parish he chanced to pass, 

 And he severed those roses in twain; 

 Sure never were seen such true lovers before, 

 Nor e'er will there be again," 

 is similar. 



The ending in "The Douglas Tragedy," 



"But bye and rade the Black Douglas, 

 And wow but he was rough ! 

 For he puU'd up the bonny brier. 

 And flang'd in St. Mary's loch,"i 



as Scott says, far surpasses the others. 



In a variant of "Fair Janet" given by Child (VIII, 466) the final 

 verse reads: 



"Till by there came an ill French Lord, 

 An ill death may he die! 

 For he pu'd up the bonnie brier, 



See also the concluding verse of "Giles Collins," in Child VI, 

 p. 515. 



In English and Scottish ballads the sympathetic plants, as we 

 have seen, are mainly the rose or the brier, and the birch. In conti- 

 nental ballads, reference is made to many more trees, shrubs or plants; 

 but there does not seem to be a single instance of the British rose 

 and brier or brier and birch. The folk-poet preferred the trees and 

 flowers of his home land, in some cases because they were sacred or 

 symbolical of purity. 



Let us study the diffusion of this folk-lore theme with reference 

 to the various plants growing from the lovers' graves. We find 

 occurrences where: (1) there are two kinds of trees; (2) the trees or 

 plants are of the same kind; (3) the trees or plants do not spring 

 from the graves but are planted; or (4) a single tree or plant is 

 mentioned. 



(1) The rose does not occur as often as one would expect, in 

 most instances being one of two trees springing from the graves. 

 In a Breton folk-song, a tree grows from the lover's grave and a rose 

 from the maiden's.^ 



1 Scott, op. cit., p. 245. 



2 Child (VIII, 443) citing Luzel (Paris, 1890). Cf. alsothe ballad "Le Plongeur." 

 in Mélusine, III, 453-454, 



