intituled, The Norfolk gent his will and Testament and how he
Commytted the keepinge of his Children to his owne brother whoe delte
moste wickedly with them and howe God plagued him for it."
It was printed as a black-letter ballad in 167O. Addison wrote a
paper on it in "The Spectator" (No. 85), praising it as "one of the
darling songs of the common people."

"The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green" is in many collections, and was
known in Elizabeth's time, another Elizabethan ballad having been set
to the tune of it. "This very house," wrote Samuel Pepys in June 1663
of Sir William Rider's house at Bethnal Green, "was built by the blind
beggar of Bednall Green, so much talked of and sung in ballads; but
they say it was only some outhouses of it." The Angels that abounded
in the Beggar's stores were gold coins, so named from the figure on
one side of the Archangel Michael overcoming the Dragon. This coin
was first struck in 1466, and it was used until the time of Charles
the First.

"The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington," or "True Love Requited," is a
ballad in Pepys's collection, now in the Bodleian. The Islington of
the Ballad is supposed to be an Islington in Norfolk.

"Barbara Allen's Cruelty" was referred to by Pepys in his Diary,
January 2, 1665-6 as "the little Scotch song of Barbary Allen." It
was first printed by Allan Ramsay (in 1724) in his "Tea-Table
Miscellany." In the same work Allan Ramsay was also the first printer
of "Sweet William's Ghost."

Fragments of "The Braes o' Yarrow" are in old collections. The ballad
has been given by Scott in his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and another