Note 12 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Mr. Whittier quotes this fine ballad in Vol. II. p. 243 of his prose works, but with numerous changes of punctuation and phrase. The differences between the poem as it there appears and as it is given in his own edition of Brainard, published in 1832, seem to show that he has amended the ballad and punctuated it to suit himself, or else has quoted it from memory, or at third or fourth remove. It must be admitted that the changes are all improvements, however they were made. The ballad is quoted above, however, as it appears in Brainard's Poems.