Brown Robin is the 97th Child ballad from the collection of 305 ballads

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

 from England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, and their American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 variants, collected by Francis James Child

Francis James Child

Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...

in the late nineteenth century.

Synopsis

A king's daughter waits on the table at supper and she falls in love with Brown Robin. She gets her father and the porter drunk and brings him to her bower, but they stay until morning, and he does not think he can escape. She persuades her father to let her and her maids gather flowers in the woods, and dresses Brown Robin as one of them. They comment that he makes a sturdy lady but let him go.

In some variants, the tale ends there. In others, the porter shoots Brown Robin, and the king hangs him at his daughter's request. In still others, the daughter goes with Brown Robin, and the porter arranges her to reconcile with her father, later, and she settles money on him for it.