Note Note — No 17 YE MAIDENS PRETTY
Reading edition
17. Ye Maidens Pretty. The words and melody from James Parsons. The fullest Broadside version, but very corrupt, is one published at Aberdeen, Ballads, B.M. (1871, f, p. 61); another, shorter, by Williams of Portsea. In both great confusion has been made by some ignorant poetaster in enlarging and altering, so that in many of the verses the rhymes have been lost. This is how the Aberdeen Broadside copy begins—