Note 63 — 273
Reading edition
“Seemingly,” says Mr Chappell, “not one bound up with the collection of ballads.”
Selden, in the second edition of his Titles of Honor (for so he chooses to spell), 1631, p. 836, remarks: Nor is that old pamphlet of the Tanner of Tamworth and King Edward the Fourth so contemptible but that wee may thence note also an observable passage wherein the use of making Esquires by giving collars is expressed. He then quotes two stanzas from the history:
‘A coller! a coller!’ our king gan cry; Quoth the tanner, It will breed sorrow; For after a coller commeth a halter, I trow I shall be hangd to morrow. ‘Be not afraid, tanner,’ said our king; ‘I tell thee, so mought I thee, Lo, here I make thee the best esquire That is in the North Countrie!’
(This passage is not in the first edition, of 1614, as I am informed by Mr Macmath, who has copied it for me.) Percy says that he has “restored” one of his stanzas from the last of these two. The restoration might as well have been made from Danter’s history, which he was using. There is a trifling variation from Danter in the fourth verse, as given by Selden and repeated by Percy, which is found in White’s edition.