Other extant versions are composite or
interpolated, so this fragment (Sharpe's) has been preferred in
this place.
MARY AMBREE
Taken by Percy from a piece in the Pepys Collection. The girl
warrior is a favourite figure in popular romance. Often she slays
a treacherous lover, as in Billy Taylor. Nothing is known of Mary
Ambree as an historical personage; she may be as legendary as fair
maiden Lilias, of Liliarid's Edge, who "fought upon her stumps."
In that case the local name is demonstrably earlier than the
mythical Lilias, who fought with such tenacity.
ALISON GROSS
Jamieson gave this ballad from a manuscript, altering the spelling
in conformity with Scots orthography. Mr. Child prints the
manuscript; here Jamieson's more familiar spelling is retained.
The idea of the romance occurs in a Romaic Marchen, but, in place
of the Queen of Faery, a more beautiful girl than the sorceress
(Nereid in Romaic), restores the youth to his true shape. Mr.
Child regarded the tale as "one of the numerous wild growths" from
Beauty and the Beast. It would be more correct to say that Beauty
and the Beast is a late, courtly, French adaptation and
amplification of the original popular "wild growth" which first
appears (in literary form) as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius.
Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in
this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel
in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid
Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis of old, not a
sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan "Fairy Queen Proserpina,"
as Campion calls her.
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