720 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
ciety. It will be noted, too, that in the testament of the ballad 
the untamed emotions of the human heart are freer to work. 
Good things and blessings are left to loved ones, and ill things 
and curses to those who are hated. In the more sophisticated 
will the curse element is softened or wholly eliminated. The 
influence of the church was almost always felt directly or indi¬ 
rectly in the making of the conventional will, and its repre* 
sentative,who was usually present, could not well let the testa¬ 
tor die with curses on his lips. 
The English ballads in which the testaments are found are 
The Gruel Brother y Lord Randal, and Edward L 1 In these 
both tangible and intangible property are left to relatives. 
The animal, too, is frequently represented in the ballad as 
making his testament. Grundtvig reports a testament of a fox 
in a Danish ballad which he thinks goes back as far as the six¬ 
teenth century. 2 Jurkschat reports from Lithuania a similar 
ballad in which a hare makes his testament. 3 Doth the fox and 
the hare will away parts of their body to appropriate legatees. 
Turning again to the Testament of literature we note Colyn 
Blowhol’s Testament as belonging to the first part of the six¬ 
teenth century. 4 It is a stupid attempt at satire, wretched 
with regard to verse structure, needlessly obscene in language, 
and inartistic in design. Colyn Blowbol gets drunk and is 
about to die. A companion announces himself as a priest of 
Venus and advises Colyn to make his testament. Having 
called in a secretary to write the testament, Colyn makes a cer¬ 
tain satirical bequests and provides for a funeral of which 
feasting and drinking are to be the chief features. 
Among the poems of William Dunbar is one called The 
Testament of Mr. Andro Kennedy (1508). 5 It was written to 
satirize some disposition contemporary of Dunbar’s, apparently 
a quack physician. The verses are alternately Scottish and 
1 Ibid., nos. 11, 12, and 13. 
2 Gamle danske Minder i Folkemunde, 1854; see also* Kristensen. 
Gamle Jyske Folkeviser, 1876, p. 324; and M. B. Lanstad, Norske Folke- 
vise , 1883, pp. 637 and 639. 
3 In his Litauische Mdrchen. 
4 W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry of England, London, 1864, I, 91. 
5 David Laing, The Poems of William "Dunbar, Edinburgh, 1834. See 
also J. Schipper, The Poems of William Dunbar, Vienna. 1891. 
