"The Boy and the Mantle" is Child ballad number 29, (Roud #3961) an Arthurian story. [1]
Unlike the ballads before it, and like "King Arthur and King Cornwall" and "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" immediately after it in the collection, this is not a folk ballad but a song from professional minstrels. [2]
A boy comes to King Arthur's court with an enchanted mantle that can not be worn by an unfaithful wife. Guinevere dons it, but appears to be naked:
So does every other lady in the court; only one can wear it, and only after she confesses to kissing her husband before their marriage. Other boys also bring a wild boar, that can not be cut by a cuckold's knife, and a cup that a cuckold can not drink from without spilling it, and these also reveal that every wife at court has been unfaithful.
The magical test of fidelity which virtually every woman fails is a common motif, being found first in fabliau and romances, such as The Faerie Queene , where Florimel's girdle fits the pattern, and Amadis of Gaul , where no one unfaithful to his or her first love can pass an archway. [3]
Sir Aldingar is Child ballad 59. Francis James Child collected three variants, two fragmentary, in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. All three recount the tale where a rebuffed Sir Aldingar slanders his mistress, Queen Eleanor, and a miraculous champion saves her.
"Allison Gross" is a traditional ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad #35. It tells the story of "the ugliest witch in the north country" who tries to persuade a man to become her lover and then punishes him by a transformation.
"The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea" is Child ballad number 36.
"Hind Horn" is a traditional English and Scottish folk ballad.
"Hind Etin" is a folk ballad existing in several variants.
Fair Annie is Child ballad number 62, existing in several variants.
King Estmere is an English and Scottish Child ballad and number 60 of 305 ballads collected by Francis James Child.
The Gay Goshawk is Child ballad number 96.
"Young Waters" is Child ballad number 94.
"Rose the Red and White Lily" is Child ballad number 103.
"The Fair Flower of Northumberland" is a folk ballad.
Leesome Brand is Child Ballad number 15 and Roud #3301.
The Bent Sae Brown is Child ballad 71.
Fause Foodrage is a Scottish murder ballad of the 17th or 18th century. It was first printed by Walter Scott in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). Scott cited Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw as the ballad's probable author.
"Gil Brenton" is Child ballad 5, Roud 22, existing in several variants.
"The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is an English Arthurian ballad, collected as Child Ballad 31. Found in the Percy Folio, it is a fragmented account of the story of Sir Gawain and the loathly lady, which has been preserved in fuller form in the medieval poem The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. The loathly lady episode itself dates at least back to Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Unlike most of the Child Ballads, but like the Arthurian "King Arthur and King Cornwall" and "The Boy and the Mantle", "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is not a folk ballad but a song for professional minstrels.
"The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter" is an English ballad, collected by Francis James Child as Child Ballad 110 and listed as number 67 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
Clerk Saunders is Child ballad 69. It exists in several variants.
Tom Potts is #109 of the Child Ballads, the collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. The collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads between 1882 and 1898 by Houghton Mifflin in ten volumes and later reissued in a five volume edition.
"King Arthur and King Cornwall" is an English ballad surviving in fragmentary form in the 17th-century Percy Folio manuscript. An Arthurian story, it was collected by Francis James Child as Child Ballad 30. Unlike other Child Ballads, but like the Arthurian "The Boy and the Mantle" and "The Marriage of Sir Gawain", it is not a folk ballad but a professional minstrel's song. It is notable for containing the Green Knight, a character known from the medieval poems The Greene Knight and the more famous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; he appears as "Bredbeddle", the character's name in The Greene Knight.
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